“The Ripe FigNow that You live here in my chest,anywhere we sit is a mountaintop.And those other images,which have enchanted peoplelike porcelain dolls from China,which have made men and women weepfor centuries, even those have changed now.What used to be pain is a lovely benchwhere we can rest under the roses.A left hand has become a right.A dark wall, a window.A cushion in a shoe heel,the leader of the community!Now silence. What we sayis poison to someand nourishing to others.What we say is a ripe fig,but not every bird that flieseats figs.”

“And look, my brother, we learned to talkvery quietly and simply.We understand each other now - there is no need for anything more.And I say tomorrow we will become still simpler;we’ll find those words that take on the same weight in all hearts, on all lips so that we can call figs figs, and a trough a trough, so that others will smile and say: ‘We’re making you a hundred poems an hour’. This is what we want too.Because we do not sing to separate ourselves from people, my brother,we sing to bring people together.”

“I'm in love!Your advice, what are they?Love has poisoned me!Your remedies, what are they?I hear them shout: "fast, Bind him feet!"But if my heart that has gone mad!Those strings on my feetWhat is the point?”

“On the path of Love we are neither masters nor the owners of our lives. We are only a brush in the hand of the Master Painter.”

“If you are seeking, seek us with joyFor we live in the kingdom of joy.Do not give your heart to anything elseBut to the love of those who are clear joy,Do not stray into the neighborhood of despair.For there are hopes: they are real, they exist –Do not go in the direction of darkness –I tell you: suns exist.”

“What is it my dear?"Ah, how can we bear it?"Bear what?"This. For so short a time. How can we sleep this time away?"We can be quiet together, and pretend - since it is only the beginning - that we have all the time in the world."And every day we shall have less. And then none."Would you rather, therefore, have had nothing at all?"No. This is where I have always been coming to. Since my time began. And when I go away from here, this will be the mid-point, to which everything ran, before, and from which everything will run. But now, my love, we are here, we are now, and those other times are running elsewhere.”

“You are sitting here with us,but you are also out walking in a field at dawn.You are yourself the animal we huntwhen you come with us on the hunt.You are in your bodylike a plant is solid in the ground,yet you are wind.You are the diver's clotheslying empty on the beach.You are the fish.In the ocean are many bright strandsand many dark strands like veins that are seenwhen a wing is lifted up.Your hidden self is blood in those,those veins that are lute stringsthat make ocean music,not the sad edge of surf,but the sound of no shore.”