Two Hearts Poem by Daniel Brick

The physical heart is everybody's
guess and no one is wrong. But
that other heart, the one we know
only through rumors carried by
urgent winds or messages coded
in birdsong or by the report of angels.

So ancient is that other heart, we can
only know it by indirection. Its deep
mystery can only be grasped by those
penetrated by love. It is a story
whose ending is rewritten by such lovers.
It is spirit-stuff and vanishes when it is

situated among human beings whose confused
responses justify the hidden place to which
the physical heart tries to confine it.
This is our second heart which understands
every language on earth but chooses to only
speak through feelings. Oh, you lovers,

don't you sense only one heart beating
in double time, blending the material and
the spiritual in a union so perfect,
so transparent we can hardly see it
in the glare of ordinary light. Say then,
there is one heart whose two halves long

to be whole. Of the spiritual half, you lovers
can give us further knowledge of its practice.
We hunger for this knowledge: it is the truth
of our being, the source of our goodness, what
makes us beautiful. We agree to be faithful
to its austere discipline. We bow before its glory!

Whatever you have learned from your immersion
in the forms of love, spill it, scatter it
in our midst, let it become a flood that carries
us to a higher plateau or being or drowns us
in this muddy lowland. We must grasp the truth
you lovers know, the truth by which we live or die:

Only those who love unconditionally, only those
who know the true path is illuminated by love,
only those who have sworn to live every moment
in love given and love received, only those
will be redeemed. Look backward to the beginning
of humanity, look forward to its end, witness its fused heart.