Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse

Kaveh Akbar is an Iranian American poet and scholar. He is the author of the poetry collections Pilgrim Bell, Calling a Wolf a Wolf and Portrait of the Alcoholic, and the novel Martyr!. He teaches Creative Writing and Poetry of the Divine at Purdue University, Indiana.

If poetry is prayer, here are scriptures. Kaveh Akbar's brave, encompassing map of spiritual hunger shows us that longing belongs to all of us, whatever the languages we speak or the geographies we inhabit

• IntroductionEnheduanna, from ‘Hymn to Inanna’      Unknown, ‘Death of Enkidu’, from The Epic of Gilgamesh                        Unknown, from The Book of the Dead           Unknown, Song of Songs, chapters 1 and 2        King David, Psalm 23                   Homer, from The Odyssey                Sappho, Fragments 22 and 118              Patacara, ‘When they plow their fields’          Lao Tzu, ‘Easy by Nature’, from Tao Te Ching      Chandaka, Two Cosmologies               Vyasa, from the Bhagavad Gita              Lucretius, from The Nature of Things          Virgil, from The Aeneid                  Shenoute, ‘Homily’                    Sengcan, ‘The Mind of Absolute Trust’          From the Quran                      Kakinomoto Hitomaro, ‘In praise of Empress Jitō’    Li Po, ‘Drinking Alone Beneath the Moon’        Rabi’a al-Basri, ‘O my lord’             Ono No Komachi, ‘This inn’               Hanshan, ‘Hanshan’s Poem’               Al-Husayn ibn Ahmad ibn Khalawayh, ‘Names of the Lion’                   Unknown, Anglo-Saxon charm              Izumi Shikibu, ‘Things I Want Decided’          Li Qingzhao, ‘Late Spring’                 Hildegard of Bingen, ‘Song to the Creator’        Mahadeviyakka, ‘I do not call it his sign’          Attar of Nishapur, ‘Parable of the Dead Dervishes in the Desert’                      St Francis of Assisi, ‘Canticle of the Sun’         Wumen Huikai, from The Gateless Gate          Rūmī, ‘Lift Now the Lid of the Jar of Heaven’       Mechthild of Magdeburg, ‘Of all that God has shown me’                        Saadi Shirazi, ‘The Grass Cried Out’           Thomas Aquinas, ‘Lost, All in Wonder’          Moses de León, from The Sepher Zohar         Dante Alighieri, from Inferno, Canto III        from the Sundiata                    Hafez, Ghazal 17                     Yaqui people, ‘Deer Song’               Nezahualcoyotl, ‘The Painted Book’          Kabir, ‘Brother, I’ve seen some’          Mirabai, ‘O friend, understand’             Yoruba people, from A Recitation of Ifa         Teresa of Ávila, ‘Laughter Came from Every Brick’Gaspara Stampa, ‘Deeply repentant of my sinful ways’St John of the Cross, ‘O Love’s living flame’Mayan people, from the Popol VuhChristopher Marlowe, from FaustusWilliam Shakespeare, Sonnet 146John Donne, ‘Batter my heart, three-person’d God’Nahuatl people, ‘The Midwife Addresses the Woman’George Herbert, ‘Easter Wings’Walatta Petros/Gälawdewos, from The Life and Struggles of Our Mother Walatta PetrosJohn Milton, from Paradise Lost, Book 4Bashō, ‘Death Song’ and ‘In Kyoto’Juana Inés de la Cruz, ‘Suspend, singer swan, the sweet strain’Yosa Buson, ‘A solitude’Olaudah Equiano, ‘Miscellaneous Verses’Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, ‘Wanderer’s Nightsong II’Phillis Wheatley, ‘On Virtue’William Blake, ‘Auguries of Innocence’Kobayashi Issa, ‘All the time I pray to Buddha’John Clare, ‘I Am!’John Keats, ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’Mirza Ghalib, ‘For the Raindrop’Elizabeth Barrett Browning, ‘Grief’Frederick Douglass, ‘A Parody’ Emily Dickinson, ‘I prayed, at first, a little Girl’     Uvavnuk, ‘The Great Sea’                Gerard Manley Hopkins, ‘God’s Grandeur’       Rabindranath Tagore, ‘The Temple of Gold’       Constantine Cavafy, ‘Body, Remember’         W. B. Yeats, ‘The Second Coming’            Rainer Maria Rilke, ‘The Second Duino Elegy’      Muhammad Iqbal, ‘These are the days of lightning’   Yosano Akiko, ‘To punish’                Sarojini Naidu, ‘In the Bazaars of Hyderabad’      Delmira Agustini, ‘Inextinguishables’          Gabriela Mistral, ‘The Return’              Anna Akhmatova, from ‘Requiem’            Osip Mandelstam, ‘O Lord, help me to live through this night’                   Edith Södergran, ‘A Life’                 Marina Tsvetaeva, from Poems to Czechia       María Sabina, from ‘The Midnight Velada’        Xu Zhimo, ‘Second Farewell to Cambridge’       Federico García Lorca, ‘Farewell’            Nâzim Hikmet, ‘Things I Didn’t Know I Loved’      Léopold Sédar Senghor, ‘Totem’             Faiz Ahmed Faiz, ‘Before You Came’          Czesław Miłosz, ‘Dedication’              Edmond Jabès, ‘At the Threshold of the Book’     Aimé Césaire, from Notebook of a Return to the Native Land                    Octavio Paz, ‘Brotherhood: Homage to Claudius Ptolemy’                   Oodgeroo Noonuccal, ‘God’s One Mistake’       Paul Celan, ‘There was Earth in Them’          Paul Laraque, ‘Rainbow’                 Nazik Al-Malaika, ‘Love Song for Words’        Wisława Szymborska, ‘Astonishment’          Zbigniew Herbert, ‘The Envoy of Mr Cogito’      Yehuda Amichai, ‘A Man in His Life’          Ingeborg Bachmann, ‘Every Day’            Kim Nam-Jo, ‘Foreign Flags’              Kamau Brathwaite, ‘Bread’                Adonis, ‘The New Noah’                 Christopher Okigbo, ‘Come Thunder’          Ingrid Jonker, ‘There Is Just One Forever’        Jean Valentine, ‘The River at Wolf’            Kofi Awoonor, ‘At the Gates’            Adélia Prado, ‘Dysrhythmia’               Lucille Clifton, ‘my dream about God’          Vénus Khoury-Ghata, from She Says          Mahmoud Darwish, ‘I Didn’t Apologize to the Well’   M. NourbeSe Philip, from Zong!            Inrasara, from Allegory of the Land           Sources                           Acknowledgements                     Index of First Lines                     Index of Titles