While leaving a comment for the recently delurked blogger Littlelake, I clicked a link to a Prince Charles’ speech marking the 800th birth anniversary of my favorite poet Jalal ud-Din Rumi, in which I found a quotation from Ms. Raine’s poem.
Who knew that all the twists and turns would delightfully lead to a poem on the mandala?
Enjoy!
—
Mandala
The center of the mandala is everywhere,
Wherever the eye falls
The mystery begins to unfold; it is there,
The growing-point of love, the ever-opening rose
Perceived as light on leaf or shadow under,
And in the brooding heart the wings stir
Of the bird whose flight is through a thousand skies.
The center of the mandala is the secret
We have always known;
Sometimes a hazel-nut in the palm of the hand,
Sometimes it covers the whole sky,
Or rains down on a city
Making strange places all familiar
Because the light that touches them is all our own.
The center of the mandala is possibility
Of incarnation, seed of the tree
About whose beams the myriad stars turn,
I the infinity where all selves converge
Into the perennial circle of the sun.
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