Rumi
Rumi
(From the book jacket) "Jelaluddin Rumi was born in the year 1207 and until the age of 37 was a brilliant scholar and popular teacher. ...Rumi...transform[ed] from scholar to artist, and his poetry began to fly...The Essential Rumi offers the most beautiful rendering of the primary poetry of Rumi to both devoted enthusiasts and novice readers. Poems about everything from bewilderment, emptiness, and silence to flirtation, elegance, and majesty are presented with love, humor, warmth, and tenderness. Take in the words of Jelaluddin Rumi and feel yourself transported to the magical, mystical, place of a whirling, ecstatic poet."
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, sitting 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 I 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.
We have a huge barrel of wine, but no cups.
That's fine with us. Every morning
we glow and in the evening we glow again.They say there's no future for us. They're right.
Which is fine with us.
Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don't open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don't go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don't go back to sleep.
I would love to kiss you.
The price of kissing is your life.Now my loving is running toward my life shouting,
What a bargain, let's buy it.
Daylight, full of small dancing particles
and the one great turning, our souls
are dancing with you, without feet, they dance.
Can you see them when I whisper in your ear?
All day and night, music,
a quiet, bright
reedsong. If it
fades, we fade.
Don't let your throat tighten
with fear. Take sips of breath
all day and night, before death
closes your mouth.
Pale sunlight,
pale the wall.Love moves away.
The light changes.I need more grace
than I thought.
In your light I learn how to love.
In your beauty, how to make poems.You dance inside my chest,
where no one sees you,but sometimes I do,
and that sight becomes this art.
A craftsman pulled a reed from the reedbed,
cut holes in it, and called it a human being.Since then, it's been wailing a tender agony
of parting, never mentioning the skill
that gave it life as a flute.
Dance, when you're broken open.
Dance, if you've torn the bandage off.
Dance in the middle of the fighting.
Dance in your blood.
Dance, when you're perfectly free.
