Michael Shepherd Poems

Where the unlimited, expanding, limiting itself as it expands,
reaches where it can limit itself no further –
there it is; there in its, our, world; there you may see it;
where it could not be more beautiful
...

She passes through life
with grace and ease and lightness
like a fine bright silken sari
caught by the gentle breeze
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This is the illicit still of poetry
half hidden in the dry ditch beyond the hedge
firewater drunk from an old tin mug
it takes the skin off your throat
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Weary with the day,
it called to me

as if someone said, here…
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Statistics tell. You can be
independent of them, but
you cannot deny them.
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Yes, how were they to know,
searching in the heat of forenoon dunes,
those high hills of sand
where once the forests grew,
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This starry dawn - the wise men yet afar -
the shepherds are abed, their night's task done.
Is Mary tired? Or, as one untouched?
All birth's a miracle; not less this one.
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See this fine manuscript
so beautifully illuminated round the picture –

why, it’s none other than Kabir!
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Oh the dark, dark otherness of others!
that brings on, such sadness, such despair…
deep, vast chasm in the heart…
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