On Hospitality: A Reply to Rumi 

- Amy Newell

Welcome all the visitors, you say.

Do not put bars on the windows

or locks on the doors. Do not close up

the chimney flue. Duct tape and plastic

sheeting will not keep visitors at bay.

They’ll pound on the doors, they’ll break

your windows, they’ll breach the barricades

they’ll storm the beach, swarm in like ants

through cracks. They’ll leak like water through

the walls, and creep like mice, and curl like smoke

and crack like ice against the window glass.

Keep them out? It can’t be done, don’t try.

Welcome all the visitors.

Fine. There’s all kinds

of welcoming, however.

I do not have to throw a house party.

I will not post flyers.

There will be no open bar.

No one will get drunk

and lock themselves in the bathroom.

No one will break furniture, grind chips

into the rug, throw anyone else in the pool

or lose an earring in the couch.

I do not have to run a guest house, either.

There will be no crackling fire

and no easy chairs. I will not serve

tea to the visitors. I will not dispense

ginger snaps and ask my guests

about themselves:

“Did my mother send you?”

“Why must you plague me?”

“Why not stay awhile longer?”

“Who are you, really?”

If I must welcome – and I am convinced I must –

Let me build a great hall to receive my guests.

Like a Greek temple, let it be open on all sides.

Let it be wide, and bright, and empty.

Let it have a marble floor:

Beautiful – and cold, and hard.

Let there be no sofas, no benches, no dark corners,

no anterooms and no coat closets.

No walls, not even a ledge to lean against.

I’ll welcome anyone who comes,

I’ll show them my enormous empty hall.

Come in, come in, I’ll say. I’ll even smile,

perhaps make a conversation for awhile.

And if someone settles on the floor, as if to stay,

or circles round and round, as if they’ve lost their way

I’ll be kind, extend my hand,

and gently show them out again.