Don't Listen To Anything I Say

Don't Listen To Anything I Say 

Don’t listen to anything I say.

 I must enter the center of the fire.

Fire is my child, but I must 

be consumed and become fire.

Why is there crackling and smoke? 

Because the firewood and the flames 

are still talking about each other.

“You are too dense. Go away!”

“You are too wavering.

 I have solid form.”

In the blackness those friends keep arguing. 

Like a wanderer with no face. 

Like the most powerful bird in existence

 sitting on its perch, refusing to move.

From The Book of Love

Translated by Coleman Barks