BOIL NICELY NOW
Look at the chickpea in the pot,
how it leaps up when it feels the fire.
While boiling, it continually rises to the top
and cries, “Why are you setting the fire under me?
Since you bought be,
why are you turning me upside down?”
“No!” she says, “boil nicely now,
and don’t leap away from the one who makes the fire.
It’s not because your are hateful to me that I boil you,
but so that you might gain flavor,
and become nutritious and mingle with essential spirit.
This affliction is not because you are despised.
When you were green and fresh,
you were drinking water in the garden;
that water-drinking was for the sake of this fire.”
