Meister Eckhart
To reach these common nuns
I must speak common German.
Invent a language by bending it
back into itself standing firmly on nothing.
For to attain God everything must go:
will, self, knowledge, word, God Himself,
to love Him as He is: non-God
non-image, hidden in the ground
of soul buried, destroyed, sinking
in the Godhead from nothing to nothing
down inside the self a silent
bottomless sea touching nothing,
no creatures that are all His speaking
heard only in the abyss of stillness
when knowing knows unknowing,
thought self shatters, bereft of thing ...
Yet my fellow Dominicans are confused
as they defend me and burn my lay followers.
They dare not yet seek my head
tortured empty of the images,
idols they have engraved in text
and the smoking flesh of heretics.
I am no heretic. Their faith is words.
Mine unspeakable.
Not Poem
not positive nor negative nor neither
not God nor Devil nor either
not Buddha nor the road to kill him on
not Harry the horse nor a mermaid's song
not me not you not I not we
not sky nor sense nor being free
not tree nor fowl nor cloud of unknowing
not mum nor dad nor not showing
up in heaven, hell or in school
not lying down at the bottom of the pool
not male nor female nor transvestite
not deadly insight in the dead of night
not mellowing nor manically meditating
not lucidly lying nor languidly levitating
not full nor empty
not I that's plenty
not I that's plenty
Peter Lach-Newinsky is a published poet who also runs a small permaculture farm in Bundanoon NSW.