Author: Barbara Barb

Title: Duties of My Heart

It is the duty of my heart to revive
when the night monster flies through rooms of darkness
and a thousand waves of sorrow
and a thousand waves of fear pour down my dreams.
When the dimensions of my existence are slowed in the terrible ice
it is the duty of my heart to sing.
When the stiff-hearted build up cold palaces of silence.
When the letters of my name fly away with their wonderful secrets.
When I stand without hands and feet
Caught in the chill skin of a sad soul
it is the duty of my heart to open me the power of breath.
To awaken my lungs in extremities of space.
When the wind is high
and the world hardens into rock around me.
When words that crawl from tongue to ear are not shot through with light
it is the duty of my heart to whisper me the noise of wings:
neshamah neshamah neshamah
Now look.
When I am released from myth and can’t bear having no original home
both as a woman and a soul.
Or am purely receptive and have nothing of my own
it is the duty of my heart to hold me to its own law.
This it will do for the sake of revival.
This it will do for me.
When nothing remains in its proper place:
the world the year the hour of the inner tongue.
When everything is somewhere else
and the masters of pain ignite their dark flame.
When I have burst into four hundred thousand worlds
and still there is no way.
When I am peculiar to myself and passion locks in longing.
When in the deathly passivity of remembrance I am stranded
stuck between windows of returning and revulsion.
When in the midnight lamentation I have lost my eyes from weeping.
When my sighs shake the wilderness and paradise misfires
it is the duty of my heart to ask me if
I want to dance.
I always do.
And so I live
when the agencies of presence
blood and breath
put on this name and play the living moment.
It is the duty of my heart to remind me
that my lips illuminate this cup of tea
and the abyss that swallows
is the source of my fullness.