***

I was raw; I matured; Then I burned

***

If you have times you don't ache with love,

there'll be roses.

Whoever is loved is beautiful and

the converse not necessarily true

Lovableness is the root principle

from which beauty grew.

:::

'There are girls more beautiful than Layla',

they told Majnoon

'But I don't love Layla for her form'

responded Majnoon

:::

"Layla in my hand is like a cup

It is the wine within I am in love with

You have eyes for the beaker,

Of the wine within you are unaware",

said Majnoon

:::

"A golden goblet studded with precious stones

Containing vinegar

Or something else other than wine

Would be of no use to me

An old broken gourd of wine

Is superior to such a golden goblet

And hundreds like it",

said Majnoon

:::

For a man to tell the wine from the beaker

He must be moved with passion and yearning

Take two men, one hungry the other full

The man suffering from hunger

Perceives a living nourishing soul in a piece of bread

The man full of food merely conceives the shape of the bread.

:::

Translation by Morteza Anvari

that opened and consumed me so quickly?

Come back my friend! The form of our love

is not a created form.

Nothing can help me but that beauty.

There was a dawn I remember

when my soul heard something

from your soul. I drank water

from your spring and felt

the current take me.

The garden of

Love

is green without

limit

and yields many

fruits

other than sorrow

and joy.

Love is beyond either

condition:

without spring,

without autumn,

it is always fresh.

"One went to the door of the Beloved and

knocked. A voice asked, 'Who is there?'

He answered, 'It is I.'

The voice said, 'There is no room for Me and Thee.'

The door was shut.

After a year of solitude and deprivation he returned and

knocked. A voice from within asked, 'Who is there?'

The man said, 'It is Thee.'

The door was opened for him."

When I am with you, we stay up all night.

When you're not here, I can't go to sleep.

Praise God for these two insomnias!

And the difference between them.

All day and night, music,

a quiet, bright

reedsong. If it

fades, we fade.

........A lover's food is the love of bread,

not the bread. No one who really loves,

loves existence......

Do you think I know what I'm doing?

That for one breath or half-breath I belong to myself?

As much as a pen knows what it's writing,

or the ball can guess where it's going next.

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.

I am so small I can barely be seen.

How can this great love be inside me?

The minute I heard my first love story

I started looking for you, not knowing

how blind that was.

Friend, our closeness is this:

anywhere you put your foot, feel me

in the firmness under you

How is it with this love,

I see your world and not you?

Listen to the presences inside poems,

Let them take you where they will.

Follow those private hints,

and never leave the premises.

Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.

They're in each other all along.

Love has taken away my practices

and filled me with poverty.

I tried to keep quietly repeating,

No strength but yours,

but I couldn't.

I had to clap and sing.

I used to be respectable and chaste and stable,

but who can stand in this strong wind

and remember those things?

A mountain keeps an echo deep inside itself.

That's how I hold your voice.

I am a scrap wood thrown in your fire,

and quickly reduced to smoke.

I saw you and became empty.

This emptiness, more beautiful than existence,

it obliterates existence, and yet when it comes,

existence thrives and creates more existence!

.........To praise is to praise

how one surrenders

to the emptiness.

.........Why should we grieve that we've been sleeping?

It doesn't matter how long we've been unconscious.

We're groggy, but let the guilt go.

Feel the motions of tenderness

around you, the buoyancy.

Never be without rememberance

of Him,

for His remembrance

gives strength and wings

to the bird of the Spirit.

If that objective of yours

is fully realized, that is

"Light upon Light"...

...But at the very least, by

practicing God's remembrance

your inner being

will be illuminated

little by little and

you will achieve

some measure of detachment

.........Lovers can't sleep when they feel the privacy

of the beloved all around them. Someone

who's thirsty may sleep for a little while,

but he or she will dream of water, a full jar

beside a creek, or the spiritual water you get

from another person. All night, listen

to the conversation. Stay up.

This moment is all there is.

Death will take it away soon enough.

You'll be gone, and this earth will be left

without a sweetheart, nothing but weeds

growing inside thorns.

I'm through. Read the rest of the poem

in the dark tonight.

Do I have a head? And feet?

Shams, so loved by Tabrizians, I close my lips.

I wait for you to come and open them.

.......Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy,

absentminded. Someone sober

will worry about things going badly.

Let the lover be.

Come to me each and all

Raw, burned or baked

Clothed or naked

Poor or wretched

Humble or bigoted

Loved or hated

Come ye all, tell me all

Tell me your untold tale

Of betrayal and separation

Of longing and lamentation

Of pain and affliction

Of joy and adoration

Of unity and affirmation

Every secret you unveil

Harken to the sound of the reed

Resonating bliss and delight

For a nexus firm and bright

To the divine sacred light

After separation and fright

From the ghastly sight

Of an unholy dogma or creed

This reed is Rumi

A gnostic well- aware

Of life's hope and despair

Of man's love and care

And capacity to forebear

The life of a solitaire

No matter how gloomy

This reed is Shams-eddin

The Sun that cast glaring light

Upon Rumi, day and night

Like the spirit of a meteorite

Piercing and glowing bright

Transforming into an acolyte

Of his disciple Jalal-eddin

Disciple - master kindred souls

Taking chances

In love's trances

In destiny's lances

In reckless dances

In joyful glances

Brethren changing roles

In the secret heart of heaven remain

The ecstasy they evoke

The envy they provoke

The tradition they broke

The tender words they spoke

Waiting for the world to soak

In thunderous rain

The cosmic lightening will strike

The words will fall like rain

And spread across the plain

Heavenly Love shall restrain

Lust and greed insane

The sacred purging the profane

In East and West alike

When the Prophet's ray of intelligence

struck the dim-witted man he was with,

the man got very happy, and talkative.

Soon, he began unmanneringly raving.

This is the problem with a selflessness

that comes quickly,

as with wine.

If the wine drinker

has a deep gentleness in him,

he will show that,

when drunk.

But if he has hidden anger and arrogance,

those appear,

and since most people do,

wine is forbidden to everyone.

My worst habit is I get so tired of winter

I become a torture to those I'm with.

If you're not here, nothing grows.

I lack clarity. My words tangle and knot up.

How to cure bad weather? Send it back to the river.

How to cure bad habits? Send me back to you.

When water gets caught in habitual whirlpools,

dig a way out through the bottom

to the ocean. There is a secret medicine

given only to those who hurt so hard

they can't hope.

The hopers would feel slighted if they knew.

Look as long as you can at the friend you love,

no matter whether that friend is moving away from you

or coming back toward you.

ONLY BREATH

What do you suggest, O Moslems!, for I do not recognize myself

I am neither Christian, nor Jew, nor Moslem

I am not of the East, nor West, nor of the land, nor of the sea

I am not of Nature's mine, nor of the circling heavens

I am not of India, nor of China, nor of Bulgaria, nor of Saqsin

I am not of the kingdom of Iraq, nor of the land of Khorasan

My place is nowhere, my trace traceless

'Tis neither body nor soul, for I belong to the soul of the Beloved

I have put duality aside, I have seen the two worlds as one

And that one call to and know, first, last, outer, inner, only that

breath breathing human being.

This discourse is the ladder reaching the sky

He who climbs it shall land on the roof

Come to the sky, develop into clouds and discharge rain

A downpipe discharges water too, but in vain

While the rain water brings many colors to the garden

The downpipe invites the neighbors to quarrel

once again

i broke free of the chains

of the wicked traps

of this world

once again

by your youthful love

i was saved from

this fraud-filled wizard

we call life

non-stop

running day and night

i finally had to cut myself off

from this deadly routine

leaping free as an arrow

from the grip of the cosmic bow

now i have no more fear

of grief and anxiety

i've learned to compete

with death itself

i lived through my wits

for forty years

now at sixty -two

finally hunted down

i am free from struggle

bread becomes blood

blood transforms to milk

and now

that i have my wisdom teeth

i am in no need of more milk

In pain, I breathe easier.

The scared child is running from the house, screaming.

I hear the gentleness.

Under nine layers of illusion, whatever the light,

Under nine layers of illusion, whatever the light,

I see your face.

RUMI (1207-1273)

ghazal number 1472, translated March 17, 1991 from RUMI: Fountain of Fire, a Celebration of Life and Love, 75 poems translated from the original 13th Century Persian by Nader Khalili, renowned writer, architect, artist, and teacher.