Emptiness (Stephen Dunn)

I’ve heard yogis talk of a divine
  emptiness,
the body free of its base desires,

some coiled and luminous god
  in all of us
waiting to be discovered…

                    and always I’ve pivoted,

followed Blake’s road of excess
  to the same source
and know how it feels to achieve

nothing, the nothing that exists
  after accomplishment.
And I’ve known the emptiness

of nothing to say, no reason to move,
  those mornings I’ve built
a little cocoon with the bedcovers

and lived in it, almost happily,
  because what fools
the body more than warmth?

                      And more than once

I’ve shared an emptiness with someone
  and learned
how generous I can be-here,

take this, take this….

LOLZ.

For What Binds Us (Jane Hirshfield)

There are names for what binds us:
strong forces, weak forces.
Look around, you can see them:
the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,
nails rusting into the places they join,
joints dovetailed on their own weight.
The way things stay so solidly
wherever they’ve been set down—
and gravity, scientists say, is weak.

And see how the flesh grows back
across a wound, with a great vehemence,
more strong
than the simple, untested surface before.
There’s a name for it on horses,
when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,

as all flesh,
is proud of its wounds, wears them
as honors given out after battle,
small triumphs pinned to the chest—

And when two people have loved each other
see how it is like a
scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;
how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend.

Keeping Quiet (Pablo Neruda)

And now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.

For once on the face of the earth
let’s not speak in any language,
let’s stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines,
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fisherman in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would not look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas,
wars with fire,
victory with no survivors, would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
(Life is what it is about,
I want no truck with death.)

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing, perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.

Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.

Now I’ll count up to twelve,
and you keep quiet and I will go.

Aerica Lovett