Please Call Me by My True Names (1978)

Don’t say that I will depart tomorrow –
even today I am still arriving.

Look deeply: every second I am arriving
to be a bud on a Spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings,
learning to sing in my new nest,

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death
of all that is alive.

My joy is like Spring, so warm
it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth.
My pain is like a river of tears,
so vast it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up
and the door of my heart
could be left open.

Excerpted from "Please Call Me by My True Names" from Call Me By My True Names: The Collected Poems of Thich Nhat Hanh (1999) by Thich Nhat Hanh with permission of Parallax Press, Berkeley, California, www.parallax.org.

The Boat People (1976)

You stay up late tonight, my brothers.
This I know:
because the boat people
on the high seas
never dare to sleep.

I hear the cry of the winds
around me –
total darkness.

Yesterday they threw the dead bodies
of their babies and children
into the water.
Their tears once again filled
the ocean of suffering.
In what direction are the boats drifting
at this moment?

You stay up late tonight, brothers,
because the boat people
on the high seas
are not certain at all that humankind exists.
Their loneliness
is so immense.

The darkness has become one with the ocean;
and the ocean, an immense desert.

You stay up all night, brothers,
and the whole universe
clings to your being awake.

"The Boat People" from Call Me By My True Names:The Collected Poems of Thich Nhat Hanh (1999) by Thich Nhat Hanh with permission of Parallax Press, Berkeley, California, www.parallax.org.

The True Source (1977)

Where will I find the Himalayan range?
In me there is a strong and graceful mountain peak,
stretching up, lost in mist and clouds.
Let us go together to climb that nameless mountain,
let us sit on the ageless blue-green stone,
quietly watching time weave the silken thread
that creates the dimension called space.

Where does the Amazon River flow?
In me a winding river makes its way.
I don’t know from the depths of which mountain
it pours out.
Night and day, its silvery water
winds toward no fixed destination.
Let us go together, putting a boat
on its fiercely flowing stream,
to find our way together
to the common goal of all beings in the cosmos.

Which galaxy shall I call Andromeda?
In me there is a river of stars moving silently
with millions of brilliant stars.
Let us fly up together, tearing the net of space,
opening a way on the path to the clouds.
The sound of your flapping wings will reach
even the most distant planet.

“What are you looking for? Where are you going?
Where is the True Source? Where is the final destination?
And what are the ways home?”                  

Excerpted from “The True Source" from Call Me By My True Names: The Collected Poems of Thich Nhat Hanh (1999) by Thich Nhat Hanh with permission of Parallax Press, Berkeley, California, www.parallax.org.