I don't want learning or dignity or respectability.
I want this music and this dawn
and the warmth of your cheek against mine.
The grief-armies assemble, but I'm not going with them.
This is how it always is when I finish a poem.
A great silence overcomes me,
and I wonder why I ever thought to use language.
- from "Like This"
A man was breaking up the soil,
when another man came by, "Why
are you ruining this land?"
"Don't be a fool! Nothing can
grow until the ground
is turned over and crumbled.
There can be no roses
and no orchard
without first this that looks devastating.
You must lance an ulcer in order to heal it.
You must tear down parts of an old building
to restore it, and so it is with a sensual life
that has no spirit in it.
To change,
a person must face the dragon of his appetites
with another dragon, the life-energy
of the soul."
When that's not strong,
the world seems to be full of people
who have your own fears and wantings.
As one thinks the room is spinning
when he's whirling around.
When your love contracts in anger,
the atmosphere itself feels threatening.
But when you're expansive, no matter
what the weather, you're in an open,
windy field with friends.
Many people travel to Syria and Iraq
and meet only hypocrites.
Others go all the way to India
and see just merchants buying and selling.
Others go to Turkestan and China
and find those countries filled
with sneak-thieves and cheats.
We always see the qualities
that are living in us.
A cow may walk from one side of the amazing city
of Baghdad to the other and notice only
a watermelon rind and a tuft of hay
that fell off a wagon.
Don't keep repeatedly doing
what your animal-soul wants to do.
That's like decided to be a strip of meat
nailed and drying on a board in the sun.
Your spirit needs to follow the changes happening
in the spacious place it knows about.
There, the scene is always new,
a clairvoyant river of picturing,
more beautiful than any on earth.
This is where the sufis wash.
Purify your eyes, and see the pure world.
Your life will fill with radiant forms.
It's a question of cleaning
then developing spiritual senses.
See beyond phenomena.
- from the Illuminated Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
Lovers of Truth- rise up!
Let us go toward heaven.
We have seen enough of this world,
It's time to see another…
No, no- don't stop here.
The gardens may flow with beauty
But let us go to the Gardner Himself.
Let us go,
Bowing to the ocean
like a raging torrent.
Let us go,
Riding upon the foaming waters
of the sea.
Let us travel from this desert of
Hunger and tears
To the feast of the newlyweds.
Let us change our expression
From one of saffron
To the blossoms of the Judas tree.
Our hearts beat fast
We tremble like leaves about to fall.
Let us become the immovable mountain.
There is no escape from pain for one in exile;
There is no escape from dust
For one who lives in a dustbowl.
Let us be like the birds of paradise,
That fly about drinking sweet water.
We are surrounded by the forms
of a formless creator.
Enough with these forms!
Let us go to the Formless One.
Love is our steady guide
On this road full of hardships.
Even if the king offers you his protection,
It is better to travel with the caravan.
We are the rain that falls upon
a leaky roof-
let us miss the holes
and fall smoothly down the spout.
We are crooked bows
With strings that run from our head to toes;
Soon we will be straight
like an arrow in flight.
We run like mice when we see a cat -
yet we are the lion's roar.
Let us become that Lion.
Let our souls
mirror the love of our Master.
Let us go before Him
With a handful of gifts.
Now let us be silent
So that the Giver of Speech may speak.
Let us be silent
So we can hear Him calling us
Secretly in the night….
We are surrounded by the forms
Of a formless Creator.
Enough with these forms!
Let us go to the Formless One!
The night has gone and day has arrived,
and the sleeper shall see what he has dreamed.
All day I think about it, then at night I say it.
Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing?
I have no idea.
My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that,
and I intend to end up there.
This drunkenness began in some other tavern.
When I get back around to that place,
I'll be completely sober. Meanwhile,
I'm like a bird from another continent, siting in this aviary.
The day is coming when I fly off,
but who is it now in my ear, who hears my voice?
Who says words with my mouth?
Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul?
I cannot stop asking.
If could taste one sip of an answer,
I could break out of this prison for drunks.
I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way.
Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.
This poetry. I never know what I'm going to say.
I don't plan it.
When I'm outside the saying of it,
I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.
This being human is a guest-house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
There is parrot in you that God speaks through.
What the parrot says, you see reflected
in phenomena. The parrot takes away what you think
you like and gives joy. She hurts you and you feel
the perfect justice of the pain. You were burning
up your soul to keep the body delighted,
but you didn't know what you were doing. I am
another kind of fire. If you have trash
to get rid of, bring it here. My kindling is always
on the verge of catching. How can such things be
hidden? How can I talk with a raging lion inside me?
The lion that wants union cannot be contained by
any meadow. I try to think of different rhyme-words,
but the Friend says, "Think only of me. Sit and rest
in my presence, where you yourself rhyme with me!
What are words anyway? Thorns in the hedge
that goes around the vineyard. I'll make word-sounds
unintelligible. I can talk to you without them!
You are the consciousness of the world, and I want
to tell you what I didn't tell Adam, or Abraham,
what Jesus held back from saying." Language has been
qualified up until now with signifiers denoting
positive and negative. No more of that. The true self
is a no-self. Fall in love with the lover who
disappears in a love for you. Be water searching
for thirst. Be silent and all ear. When Spring
ecstasy floods, build a dam or everything will wash
away. Oh let it go! Under the foundation's ruins
there's a treasure. Those drowned in God want to be
more drowned. They can't decide, being thrown
about, whether they love more the bottom,
the surface, or some middle region.
There is no reality but God.
Return to the top
of heartspace
Sufi links:
