Poet's desert...

The desert has a strong relationship with spiritual quests. The desert itself invokes images of a vast expanse, where man may be alone to commune with the higher power and forces of nature. For many poets the desert is an allegory for a spiritual quest of the soul journeying into the infinite.

The desert has inspired several religions and spiritual figures dating back to the ancient Egyptian religions and worship of the sun God Ra. According to the Bible Jesus Christ spent 40 days and 40 nights in the desert where he forsook all earthly temptations. This trial in the desert was an important part of his spiritual training and spiritual mission. Mohammed the prophet of Islam loved the deserts and mountains and often spent time meditating and praying in the silence of the desert.

These are fragments of differentes poemes about the desert:

 "Oh that the desert were my dwelling place,


With only one fair spirit for my minster.


That I might forget the human race,


And hating no one, love her only."

 Lord Byron

 

 

 

"In the Desert of the heart,


Let the healing start;


In the prison of his days,


Teach the free man to praise."

W.H.Auden

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding     

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing     

Memory and desire, stirring     

Dull roots with spring rain.     

        Winter kept us warm, covering             

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding     

A little life with dried tubers.

  

T.S. Eliot 

With thee, in the Desert—

With thee in the thirst—

With thee in the Tamarind wood—

Leopard breathes—at last! 

Emily Dickinson 

I think of the lizards airing their tongues

In the crevice of an extremely small shadow

And the toad guarding his heart's droplet.

The desert is white as a blind man's eye,

Comfortless as salt.  Snake and bird

Doze behind the old maskss of fury.

We swelter like firedogs in the wind.

Sylvia Plath 

In the desert

I saw a creature, naked, bestial,

Who, squatting upon the ground,

Held his heart in his hands,

And ate of it.

I said: "Is it good, friend?"

"It is bitter - bitter," he answered;

"But I like it

Because it is bitter,

And because it is my heart 

Stephen Crane 

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces

Between stars—on stars where no human race is.

I have it in me so much nearer home

To scare myself with my own desert places. 

Robert Frost 

The lion ate America, bit off her head

and loped off to the golden hills

that's all there is to say

about america except 

that now she's 

lionshit all over the desert. 

Allen Ginsberg