I have a magical caftan
made from an Indian bedspread.
A barefoot man caught
a blue garden,
the same way others
catch butterflies or stars,
and planted it on the
plain, unbleached muslin.
The bedspread is the kind
you get by mail,
but don’t be led by thinking
this is an ordinary dress:
It is organic.
It is alive,
somewhat in the way
kaleidoscopes and sunsets
are alive; more so:
It knows the cycles
of it’s rising and its setting,
and the meaning of its
endless transformations.
Curled under its generous
blue garden, I tent myself
away from the world:
body swinging in a hammock;
spirit jetting through the stars.
(But never wear shoes
with a dress such as this;
otherwise, the magic does not work).
It has dreams it dreams
and lets me dream.
Dreams (part memories
and futures expanding
forever,
beyond all possible visions
and mostly, revelations.)
It knows the soul
of the seed and all
the future it contains.
I listen in rapture when
it speaks in gentle voices:
(Deep secret voices
needless of sound,
thick with experience,
and light with promise.)
It speaks, not from itself
but from the heart of things:
of the miraculous universe
beyond the glass door
where the blue garden
is forever, and the barefoot
gardener dreams fresh
buds –from blue
to deeper blue-
and new transparent leaves.
Oh, my magical dress!
My dreaming-in caftan
is of the kind that has
a karmic link with you.
(Travels from source to destination
to meet you at the appointed hour.)
It transforms the world
when it is worn, and all
visible boundaries
dissolve…
The boundary is the
illusion of ordinary minds,
refusing to understand
that matter has infinite extension
t all points,
in all directions.
It explains secret reasons
for things
we claim to understand
and tells me that everything we know
is really process and reflection:
an endless process
without beginning,
without end.
But fools who vegetate
in spheres of measurable
dimensions reject this.
So, I bear my secret
like a hurt.
I zoom through boundless space
beyond the whirling universes
and enter the ancestral temple
at the point where past
and future meet
in an eternal present.
It is the mysterious land
of miracles.
Outside all things
and yet within,
The miraculous awaits
forever there
behind the commonplace.
It’s only need –to be discovered-
and then it jumps to live.
Already the eye can see
what the heart will learn!
I travel with a moving
which is perfect stillness:
ascending in all directions
simultaneously.
No distinction
of part and totality,
periphery and center,
Apocalypse and Genesis.
Before is after,
and after, both precedes
and follows.
Perfect identity,
simultaneity
outside and beyond causality.
(The dreams that
Science dreamt in its slumber
shatter to bits
tenet by tenet
and law by law.)
Oh, magical caftan!
My karmic magical dreaming –in
caftan
has tentacles
reaching into infinity!
It has the key to a secret door.
(But never wear shoes
with a dress like this;
otherwise, that door will close
and the magic,
disappears).