Saturday's Poem: Blessed Are They Who Sow and Do Not Reap

(Photo above by Xander Cansell, who is here from England visiting the Ranch and seeing it with new eyes.)

Is this blog dead? Not quite, but it's certainly dormant. As I've said earlier, I am shifting my focus in order to work on a more tangible project. Sometimes it seems that I have only so much "creative" writing time and energy in me, and it is easily swallowed up by email correspondence and blogging.

At other times, I believe the blog is a good discipline and that the more one writes...well, the more one writes. In any case, it has been a season of distractions, so much so that even the Saturday poem got skipped, and what could be simpler than posting a poem? This morning, however, with Saturday's poem still absent from my thoughts, I received an email from my sister with a beautiful poem by Avraham Ben Yitzhak attached (translated by Peter Cole), and I thought the poem worthy of sharing:

BLESSED ARE THEY WHO SOW AND DO NOT REAP by Avraham Ben Yitzhak

Blessed are they who sow and do not reap —
they shall wander in extremity.

Blessed are the generous
whose glory in youth has enhanced the extravagant
brightness of days —
who shed their accoutrements at the crossroads.

Blessed are the proud whose pride overflows
the banks of their souls
to become the modesty of whiteness
in the wake of a rainbow’s ascent through a cloud.

Blessed are they who know
their hearts will cry out from the wilderness
and that quiet will blossom from their lips.

Blessed are these
for they will be gathered to the heart of the world,
wrapped in the mantle of oblivion
— their destiny’s offering unuttered to the end.