I would like to share a poem by Marie Howe called „Prayer“.
In a nutshell, it‘s about intimacy, about relation-ship. In the poem, Marie Howe finds words for the breathlessness, the relentless restlessness that stems from a deep fear of connecting to oneself and others.
I discovered the poem by chance online and after reading it a couple of times I realised I didn‘t understand it. So I read it out to several friends and was lucky to have an exchange with Almuth who helped me find my way into the poem. In retrospect I‘m baffled what I didn‘t understand, a bit like with riding a bicycle. Marie Howe also had „help“ with writing her poem „Prayer“, she was inspired by the 12th century mystic Ibn Arabi. So thanks to him, to Almuth, and to Marie Howe, always.
I‘ve included Ibn Arabi‘s poem and my conversation with Almuth in the post.
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Prayer
Every day I want to speak with you. And every day something more important
calls for my attention – the drugstore, the beauty products, the luggage
I need to buy for the trip.
Even now I can hardly sit here
among the falling piles of paper and clothing, the garbage trucks outside
already screeching and banging.
The mystics say you are as close as my own breath.
Why do I flee from you?
My days and nights pour through me like complaints
and become a story I forgot to tell.
Help me. Even as I write these words I am planning
to rise from the chair as soon as I finish this sentence.
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After I‘d read the poem out loud to Almuth – with the introduction that I didn‘t understand it and wanted her take on it – Almuth said: „I get it, this is exactly how it is with me. It‘s about running away from the deep pain, a deep inner pain and always being afraid of completely opening because of being afraid of being hurt. While she writes the poem she realises what‘s happening but she is still running away. She is running away from herself and from the other, wanting to be close and not wanting to.“
I began to understand the poem. I said: „In the line „you are as close as my own breath“ she means that with my breath I share space with you, with my inbreath as well as my outbreath. I keep having the illusion that I‘m breathing alone, but the other is already part of me and closer than I can imagine it. I can‘t imagine it and the whole time it‘s just happening.
Almuth said: „She wants to talk to the other person, sharing breath in a deliberate way, opening up and talking deeper. Then it‘s an opening up and you start to feel the shared space and that‘s painful and it makes you very vulnerable.“
I asked: What do you mean „talk deeper“ and what does Marie Howe mean by „a story I forgot to tell“?
Almuth said: „I want to speak about something that comes up in life, a conflict, and I‘m not able to clear the conflict. Or there is something I want to share but the days go by and we weren‘t able to find that space. What I want to speak about builds up and at the same time it‘s no longer tangible.
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Ibn Arabi:
“O dear one, listen! I am the reality of the world, the center of the circle. I am the parts and the whole. I am the will holding Heaven and Earth in place. I have given you sight only so you may see me.
0 dear one! I call again and again but you do not hear me, I appear again and again but you do not see me, I fill myself with fragrance, again and again, but you do not smell me. I become savory food yet you do not taste me. Why can’t you reach me through your touch Or breathe me in through your sweet perfumes?
Love me, Love yourself in me. No one is deeper within you than I. Others may love you for their own sake, But I love you for yourself.
Dear one! This bargain is not fair. If you take one step toward me, It is only because I have taken a hundred toward you. I am closer to you than yourself. Closer than your soul, than your own breath. (my highlighting) Why do you not see me? Why do you not hear me? I am so jealous. I want you to see me-and no one else. To hear me-and no one else, not even yourself
Dear one! Come with me. Let us go to Paradise together. And if we find any road that leads to separation, We will destroy that road. Let us go hand in hand In the presence of Love. Let it be our witness, Let it forever seal this wondrous union of ours.”
Source: https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/prayer-269/
Manheim, Ralph, trans. Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn ‘Arabi. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969, pp. 174-175.