What Will Our Children Do?

THE WAY WINGS SHOULD
—Rumi

What will
our children do in the morning?
Will they wake with their hearts wanting to play,
the way wings
should?

Will they have dreamed the needed flights and gathered
the strength from the planets that all men and women need to balance
the wonderful charms of
the earth

so that her power and beauty do not make us forget our own?

I know all about the ways of the heart—how it wants to be alive.

Love so needs to love
that it will endure almost anything, even abuse,
just to flicker for a moment. But the sky's mouth is kind,
its song will never hurt you, for I
sing those words.

What will our children do in the morning
if they do not see us
fly?

__________________

—Medusa

(Today's poem was translated from the Persian
by Farideh Azodi Davidson and Daniel Ladinsky)