1. |
Eden
03:50
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And when you gave, then turned away, your ocean eyes, I knew
My heart would break in waves there on the rocks of losing you.
I didn’t ask for this; I only breathed without belief
Unconscious idle prayers: I never dreamed you’d make them true.
My life’s in ruins now; I can’t go home, nor to your door:
In bar and hermit chapel, all I taste is missing you.
I talk about you all the time and think I’ve made some sense
But if my words can’t bring you near....what good can they do?
My days were full of waiting for your Christ feet at my door.
They’re empty now the dove in hand is just the bird that flew.
You touched me once; I closed my eyes; your warmth was like a fire;
I let it smoulder gently: now it blasts my heart in two.
O lover, don’t complain, “this never lost is never found”
The world will think you’re crazy and besides it’s kind of true.
*
(spoken) Well I guess we better get the Love Suit on, O Who Ru....
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2. |
Heavenly Moon
03:28
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"My heart sought … a pearl beyond the shell of existence and time....." (Hafiz)
I catch your eye out of space-time, a breathless poise out of mind;
A pearl I lost and have long sought, but never dreamed I could find.
"My heart sought … a pearl beyond the shell of existence and time....."
I dance with you in my mind’s eye, and pour a rose for your mouth,
Or sip your kiss at a drunk's bar where vision comes to the blind.
"My heart sought … a pearl beyond the shell of existence and time....."
This love that draws me is so true, I lose my grip on the false:
It calls my heart from a jungle where lovers hunt but don’t find.
"My heart sought … a pearl beyond the shell of existence and time....." (Hafiz)
This love that draws me is so true, my heart is aching to steal
A pearl for you from my life's shell, a nightingale from the wind.
"My heart sought … a pearl beyond the shell of existence and time....."
This love that draws me is so true, a heavenly moon in June
And bunch of red roses comes calling; I want to leave me behind.
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3. |
The Divinest New Teacher
03:25
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The divinest new teacher has come to our school.
In a swirling of stars, I eclipse every rule.
As his brilliant dark look unblinds my mind's eye
To his heart-piercing question, I glow like a fool.
I am deaf to the end of his first lesson bell;
All the bells in my heart are in tune with his call.
I’m as deaf to the world as love’s wonderstruck bell
Swung to heaven by Krishna and dying to fall.
I must hand him my pages of error and shame
With the angels a choir in my ears, high and cool.
Though you're dazed by my radiance: striking its chord
Is his liturgy ‘Love is the key to it all.’
I am deaf to the end of his first lesson bell;
All the bells in my heart are in tune with his call.
I’m as deaf to the world as love’s wonderstruck bell
Swung to heaven by Krishna and dying to fall.
To just drift through these corridors - echoing, bright -
Where his presence has lingered, is blissful, is cruel.
“Loving far-sighted Pupil, distracted, see Me.”
And his laser cuts straight to my heart, like a jewel.
I am deaf to the end of his first lesson bell;
All the bells in my heart are in tune with his call.
I’m as deaf to the world as love’s wonderstruck bell
Swung to heaven by Krishna and dying to fall.
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4. |
Through A Thousand Years
02:21
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Through a thousand years I've loved Him more and more,
Now his fresh white rose is all I’m breathing for.
On a breathless trail, my nose for grossness lost,
On these blazing scents, I burn to reach His core.
Just to think of Him unlocks our love’s perfume,
Makes the pure light clear and tunes me to the score.
Now the ruined choir of faith, it springs to life.
"This is love!" he beams, "which nothing can ignore."
Ah! his Satellite re-navigates my car
Ah! my I-pod blows as main-lane engines roar.
All the power from His ring I hold in hand,
Through the fine torn veil my eyes are burned the more.
Novice, feed this pealing kiss, this heaven fire
And let Now's fine essence linger, ever more…
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5. |
330 Million Angels
05:23
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"Gone my long reign and its vapour’s subtle shape-shifting Cloud;
Breath of God’s shadow falling as rain, my own shadow.
“King of angels, I, yet angels and gods looking down
Pray for low birth to ascend where we high spirits go.
“Man yet king god, I return to the earth as a star;
Raise the standard of what men may become, the hero.
“Man and not god, with my lightning confined in a sword,
Earthed, to die there like a man, pass the third heaven so.
“Like St Michael, ageless angel, took one lifetime as a man
To be God the day his body died, so let me below...”
Oh, beloved, do not offer me that bliss of the gods:
Three hundred and thirty million angels who bow.
I, who loved you in dark exile on the Earth for one smile;
Power over power: where even angels fear to go.
“Shipwrecked Angel, flight deck sinking, high Olympus in flood,
Aim your love-Ark at a peak where the archangels would know.
From Olympus, love must wing down, past a harp chord in a cloud
Of some cheap scent, past a dreamland, to this child’s play, to have worth.
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6. |
If You Conquer
05:12
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"Do not try to conquer others; conquer yourself and you will have conquered the world." (Meher Baba)
Mortal blitzgrieg’s a mere shadow of my splendour but above
More than Pure Will’s Look of Thunder, Lash of Lightning, is our Love.
“Do not once,” warned my beloved, “try to conquer other selves.
If you conquer yours, you’ve conquered there the whole world in my Love.”
On a sword-edge bridge of thought deeds - to my Love’s wish or my own:
All the power of my glory; all the sweet fire of his Love.
In a dark night, He has left me crying blindly for his glare:
Turn the hell-scorch of this longing to the blazed pain of our Love!
In an agony of passion I could smash worlds into dust.
All my flash mind is exploding, in the space void of his Love.
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7. |
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In a far land where my thoughts throng by like strangers, I’m at home:
Every dirt track, every silk step over marble, is His own.
There are twinned queues for his rich port, endless pulped forms left to fill:
Lovers’ thin bribes, like the beggared, seek a short cut to His dome.
To his doorway, I’m delivered by a rickshaw driven blind;
To His candle, in His still room, where all thoughts fly, I have flown.
All unravelled in His presence, all the heavens in a thought;
I am sight-drunk on the soul-bliss of the vision He has shown.
All this heartland made of cracked crags, which his ‘slaves' heave up the hill,
Every thought-bloom, all this love-light in my mind’s Eye, he has sown.
Were he Lord Ram, though his blood-foe, for his Sita I would die
Like King Ravana’s bold sister, wait an epoch for my groom.
Were he Albert, come to pay back all the love-dues Rama owed,
As Victoria, for that lost groom, in a grave dress I would moan.
Humming mantrum, Om and Empress of the thought world, hear his song:
“Do not seek, child, it’s your own veil, like a cobweb, must be blown!”
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8. |
Seeing Is Believing
03:22
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Seeing is believing : glimpsed in youth my Love-sick Mazdah
Seen now dancing slim and strong at dawn in shining sadra.
Everywhere in everything and endlessly I see Him
Face to childlike mirrored face who calls me now his Radha.
No desire or energy or thought or trial exists now.
Only His in whom I feel and breathe and am my Master.
Archangelic heart to hearts, His hands as quick as feeling
Close my eyes to slower worlds: His larks lift spirit’s purdah.
Manhood wrecked with fasts and burdens, sacrifice, and service,
Pangs of separation – borrowed – God could work no harder.
Skyward-staring, fractured-limbed, in agony, He’s waving,
“Help my darling first,” – the purest feeling, mind’s un-masker.
Eye to Eye now, reading “One not we”, his feet I’m pressing.
Cuttings, curls, His silenced seed of withered joys I garner.
Heart of hearts, this lonely grief, these flames of lover’s longing
Finely veil you, and your opened Eye’s the All-Outsider.
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9. |
Shadows Prevail
03:53
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This Face that burns upon my Eye in searing fiery gale:
More clear than any seen on Earth or heavenward trail.
The Lancelot shot down in flames, the highest craft of all:
Conception deconstructed lifting Guinevere’s veil.
‘I see your Face in everything, but cannot leap the gulf
Between belief in what I see and being what I fail.’
It’s Leila’s I-consuming, never-ending, parted love
For Majnu, her sole bleeding where his sole trod upon a nail.
He feels his wreck in her, a bliss that pierces his heart
And bleeds from hers like wounds of Passion’s holiest nail.
The agony of longing long, the ecstasy of pain
In hearts that See their grail through golden bars of a gaol!
Your Sun is Everything and there is nothing that is not the Sun:
My black hole All-consumed in one whole - yet shadows prevail.
In sainted flames of love, with nothing else it can see
It burns away in grief, this Eye that can’t have the Grail.
O Heart of Hearts, her Absent Heart is All to you now.
She’s in the Seventh Sun, where Lovers leap and visions...fail
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10. |
This is God
06:17
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Sav bar tahira dama ha thon mire aya
Jab ankh khuli dikha apna hi gariban hai – (Asghar)
‘A hundred times I felt that I held your garment firmly in my hands;
When I opened my eyes I was amazed to discover it was my own garment I was holding.'
Illumination’s burning Eye has gone, let darkness come,
A slip between the Grail and Lip, a black hole in the sun.
In total Darkness, total Light; in Nothingness, nirvana.
Who dared to love, now lover and beloved love as one.
I lift the Grail, the Holy Grail I always was and am
The musk the deer pursued, the winging moth and flame made one!
A golden rose, a thousand suns, a blaze of brimming light
Now overflows my lip with love: the Earth is stirred and shaken.
Brings Light to Earth and Earth to Light, un-maims the Wounded King,
Unwinter the Grail Maiden’s eyes, makes Maid and May King one.
The quest’s achieved, the Earth will live, heart’s wilderness is sown
With seeds lost in the fruit it bears, the soul of all is won.
O Who of Whos, your heart has burst and pours on Winter’s Kingdom
Your cornucopic vessel’s rays: Who dared win love – has won!
*
This is God. On the highest of highs through the gulf of a tomb,
(This is God.) I’m on top of the worlds born of mind, spirit, womb.
I am not. Now the bubble has burst, there is nothing but sea:
This is God. I’m as drowned in His kiss as the bud in her bloom.
I’m in Love. All the pain in my heart’s disappeared like a dream:
This is God. I am dead to the worlds and awake to my swoon.
I am Him. Now the primal beloved and lover are one:
This is God. I’ve become Who I journeyed towards and from Whom.
Oh my love! He’s embraced me and brought me at last to himself:
This is God. Now I see there is only my Self in his room.
I’m the soul. “There’s no dark where there’s light, no unknown where one knows.”
This is God. Little mind has been razed with its search and its gloom.
O my God! You’re beyond the beyond but you’re found on the Earth.
This is Me, All in All, in the flesh: this perfection, this Home.
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The Baba Lovers England, UK
The Baba Lovers are an Atlantic-transcending duo: English poet Gareth Calway and American singer-songwriter Gabriella Tal. The Beloved is Avatar Meher Baba, whose favourite poet was Hafiz and whose favourite poetic form the ghazal (a Persian love lyric). We met in India at the Meher Pilgrim Centre in Ahmednagar in 1994 and wrote a couple of songs. We reconnected online in 2016 and wrote an album. ... more
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