greed

"The Southern Transept, hardly known by any other name but Poets' Corner"
DEAN STANLEY

Tread softly here; the sacredest of tombs
Are those that hold your poets. Kings and queens
Are facile accidents of Time and Chance.
Chance sets them on the heights, they climb not there!
But he who from the darkling mass of men
Is on the wing of heavenly thought upborne
To finer ether, and becomes a voice
For all the voiceless, God annointed him:
His name shall be a star, his grave a shrine.

In the Book of God (Ilahi-nama) 'Attar framed his mystical teachings in various stories that a caliph tells his six sons, who are kings themselves and seek worldly pleasures and power.
The first son is captivated by a virgin princess, and his father tells him the adventures of a beautiful and virtuous woman who attracts several men but miraculously survives their abuse and then forgives them. They acknowledge that carnal desire is necessary to propagate the race but also recognize that passionate love can lead to spiritual love, which can annihilate the soul in the beloved.

How calm, how beauteous and how cool--
How like a sister to the skies,
Appears the broad, transparent pool
That in this quiet forest lies.
The sunshine ripples on its face,
And from the world around, above,
It hath caught down the nameless grace
Of such reflections as we love.

But deep below its surface crawl
The reptile horrors of the night--
The dragons, lizards, serpents--all
The hideous brood that hate the light;
Through poison fern and slimy weed
And under ragged, jagged stones

Me let the world disparage and despise --
   As one unfettered with its gilded chains,
   As one untempted by its sordid gains,
Its pleasant vice, its profitable lies;
Let Justice, blind and halt and maimed, chastise
   The rebel spirit surging in my veins,
   Let the Law deal me penalties and pains
And make me hideous in my neighbours' eyes.

But let me fall not in mine own esteem,
   By poor deceit or selfish greed debased.
   Let me be clean from secret stain and shame,

Swift swallows sailing from the Spanish main,
O rain-birds racing merrily away
From hill-tops parched with heat and sultry plain
Of wilting plants and fainting flowers, say--

When at the noon-hour from the chapel school
The children dash and scamper down the dale,
Scornful of teacher's rod and binding rule
Forever broken and without avail,

Do they still stop beneath the giant tree
To gather locusts in their childish greed,
And chuckle when they break the pods to see

Although the aepyornis
or roc that lived in Madagascar, and
the moa are extinct,
the camel-sparrow, linked
with them in size--the large sparrow
Xenophon saw walking by a stream--was and is
a symbol of justice.

This bird watches his chicks with
a maternal concentration-and he's
been mothering the eggs
at night six weeks--his legs
their only weapon of defense.
He is swifter than a horse; he has a foot hard
as a hoof; the leopard

is not more suspicious.How

I'm in a wild neglected niche,
Mojave joins the sublime ditch.
Out from Lake Meade where deserts burn
As heat surrounds a cooking urn.

These fiery winds may take their toll
Infernos' depths; devil's punch bowl.
Bright ochre sands like burnished chrome
Reflects the sun, earth's nascent home.

Grand Canyon's wild. So am I.
Wild donkeys thrive with coyotes nigh.
Cactus water, at least, is clean
When hunger gnaws, there's mesquite beans.

Let coyotes howl. Old owls can hoot

Gold in the mountain,
And gold in the glen,
And greed in the heart,
Heaven having no part,
And unsatisfied men.

God dwells in you; in pride and shame,
In all you do to blight or bless;
In all you are of praise and blame,
In beauty or in ugliness.
"Divine Creation" - What a fraud!
God did not make you . . . You make God.
II
God lives in me, in all I feel
Of love and hate, of joy and pain,
Of grace and greed, or woe and weal,
Of fear and cheer, of loss and gain:
For good or evil I am He,
Yea, saint or devil, One are we.
III
God fends and fights in each of us;
His altars we, or bright or dim;

Australia's a big country
An' Freedom's humping bluey,
An' Freedom's on the wallaby
Oh! don't you hear 'er cooey?
She's just begun to boomerang,
She'll knock the tyrants silly,
She's goin' to light another fire
And boil another billy.

Our fathers toiled for bitter bread
While loafers thrived beside 'em,
But food to eat and clothes to wear,
Their native land denied 'em.
An' so they left their native land
In spite of their devotion,
An' so they came, or if they stole,