On the subject of death I wrote the following prose-poem:
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DEATH ONCE DEAD, THERE’S NO MORE DIEING THEN*
Many a hound pursueth this gazelle of the desert of oneness; many a talon claweth at this thrush of the eternal garden. Pitiless ravens do lie in wait for this bird of the heavens of God...
-Baha’u’llah, Seven Valleys(US, 1952), p.41.
Live free of love, for its very peace is anguish;
Its beginning is pain, its end is death.
-Arabian Poem quoted by Baha’u’llah, Seven Valleys(US, 1952), p.42.
So sweet you trace across the evening air.
I almost missed you as I passed by,
but your fragrance so suddenly and gently
took me high, the softest twist, ‘twas
like that face of beauty which caught
my eye with wonder in the room by the
window under the noonday sun.
How can such beauty be contained in
such a form of eyes, mouth and hair
and such cheeks and forehead?
I soak the beauty and breath the fragrance
into my soul, but then: what can one do
with such beauty after one has drunk it in?
A moment’s fancy, bright, deep longing,
draft of wonder, sight, can not be taken home;
one can not drink forever; it comes and goes
just like the weather’s changing tune.
But here, over here, is a beauty that won’t die.
It dwells forever and beyond the sky in some
emerald height of fidelity.** This is a fragrance
I have known and seen, but the claws of earth,
hounds, pitiless ravens and huntsmen of envy stalk
this pure face of beauty and its sweetest fragrance.
What I have known long, too, can be a memory
like that frangipani I passed tonight, or that young
face of delightful beauty in the sun by my window.
For this beauty that won’t die lives within,
while outside pain and anguish often seem to win.
Ron Price
8 October 1995
* Shakespeare, The Sonnets, Number 146.
** Baha’u’llah, Hidden Words, Persian, 77.