From f53fc3530d19fcefd819fdcce39f8f34ec44c7e5 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: jules Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2025 20:01:58 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] Update rumi.txt --- rumi.txt | 245 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--------------------------- 1 file changed, 124 insertions(+), 121 deletions(-) diff --git a/rumi.txt b/rumi.txt index f1ea004..8d033d8 100644 --- a/rumi.txt +++ b/rumi.txt @@ -460,7 +460,7 @@ you can buy hundreds of rose gardens? Where, for one seed you get a whole wilderness? For one weak breath, the divine wind? -THE MUSIC WE ARE +THE MUSIC WE ARE Did you hear that winter’s over? The basil and the carnations cannot control their laughter. @@ -490,7 +490,7 @@ Nothing can stay bound or be imprisoned. You say, “End this poem here and wait for what’s next.” I will. Poems are rough notations for the music we are. -W A L N U T S +WALNUTS Philosophers have said that we love music because it resembles the sphere-sounds of union. We’ve been part of a harmony @@ -526,7 +526,7 @@ You that come to birth and bring the mysteries, your voice-thunder makes us very happy. Roar, lion of the heart, and tear me open! -N O B E T T E R G I F T +NO BETTER GIFT When the ocean comes to you as a lover, marry, at once, quickly, for God’s sake! @@ -551,7 +551,7 @@ for fitting the window, or the latch. A thousand half-loves must be forsaken to take one whole heart home. -P A T T E R N +PATTERN When love itself comes to kiss you, don’t hold back! When the king goes hunting, @@ -564,7 +564,7 @@ spiderwebs of smoke and saliva, fragile thought-packets. Leave thinking to the one who gave intelligence. Stop weaving, and watch how the pattern improves. -A U C T I O N +AUCTION As elephants remember India perfectly, as mind dissolves, as song begins, as the glass @@ -580,7 +580,7 @@ jargon forgotten, and Saladin there raising his hand to bid on the bedraggled boy Joseph! -Q U I E T N E S S +QUIETNESS Inside this new love, die. Your way begins on the other side. Become the sky. @@ -595,14 +595,13 @@ sign that you’ve died. Your old life was a frantic running from silence. The speechless full moon comes out now. -S O M E K I S S W E There is some kiss we want +SOME KISS WE WANT +There is some kiss we want with our whole lives, the touch of spirit on the body. Seawater begs the pearl to break its shell. And the lily, how passionately it needs some wild darling! -W A N T - At night, I open the window and ask the moon to come and press its face against mine. @@ -610,7 +609,7 @@ Breathe into me. Close the language-door and open the love-window. The moon won’t use the door, only the window. -T H E W A T E R W H E E L +THE WATER WHEEL Stay together, friends. Don’t scatter and sleep. Our friendship is made @@ -625,7 +624,7 @@ for what it thinks it wants. Stay here, quivering with each moment like a drop of mercury. -B L E S S I N G T H E M A R R I A G E +BLESSING THE MARRIAGE This marriage be wine with halvah, honey dissolving in milk. This marriage be the leaves and fruit @@ -636,7 +635,7 @@ for us to study. This marriage, beauty. This marriage, a moon in a light blue sky. This marriage, this silence, fully mixed with spirit. -T W O D A Y S O F S I L E N C E +TWO DAYS OF SILENCE After days of feasting, fast. After days of sleeping, stay awake one night. After these times of bitter @@ -657,7 +656,7 @@ A little while alone in your room will prove more valuable than anything else that could ever be given you. -P A S S A G E I N T O S I L E N C E +PASSAGE INTO SILENCE The essence of darkness is light, as oil is the essence of this light. You are the origin of all jasmine, narcissi, @@ -683,7 +682,7 @@ These words are an alternate existence. Hear the passage into silence and be that. - . A New Life +A New Life As one becomes a lover, duties change to inspirations. Prac- tices become dance, poetry, creek music moving along. Impossible natural images of transformation appear: candle @@ -750,7 +749,7 @@ asked me what religion I was. I threw up my hands in the who knows gesture. “Good,” he said. “Love is the religion, and the universe is the book.” -E S C A P I N G T O T H E F O R E S T +ESCAPING TO THE FOREST Some souls have gotten free of their bodies. Do you see them? Open your eyes for those who escape to meet with other escapees, @@ -769,14 +768,14 @@ Love puts away the instruments and takes off the silk robes. Our nakedness together changes me completely. -A N Y C H A N C E M E E T I N G +ANY CHANCE MEETING In every gathering, in any chance meeting on the street, there is a shine, an elegance rising up. Today I recognized that that jewel-like beauty is the presence, our loving confusion, the glow in which watery clay gets brighter than fire, the one we call the Friend. -N A S U H ’ S C H A N G I N G +NASUH'S CHANGING At that moment his spirit grows wings and lifts. His ego falls like a battered wall. He unites with God, alive, @@ -795,7 +794,7 @@ What I say makes me drunk. Nightingale, iris, parrot, jasmine, I speak those languages, along with the idiom of my longing for Shamsi Tabriz. -T H E C I R C L E +THE CIRCLE Is there anything better than selling figs to the fig seller? That’s how this is. @@ -828,7 +827,7 @@ the poem again so he can play. There is no end to anything round. -T H E D E A T H O F S A L A D I N +THE DEATH OF ALADIN You left ground and sky weeping, mind and soul full of grief. No one can take your place in existence @@ -851,7 +850,7 @@ trembles and sobs. If you know how to weep for human beings, weep for Saladin. -B I R D W I N G S +BIRD WINGS Your grief for what you’ve lost lifts a mirror up to where you’re bravely working. Expecting the worst, you look, and instead, @@ -863,7 +862,7 @@ Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birdwings. -T H E S I L E N T A R T I C U L A T I O N O F A F A C E +THE SILENT ARTICULATION OF A FACE Love comes with a knife, not some shy question, and not with fears for its reputation! I say @@ -894,7 +893,7 @@ does night go? I have no more words. Let soul speak with the silent articulation of a face. -T H E A L L U R E O F L O V E +THE ALLURE OF LOVE Someone who does not run toward the allure of love walks a road where nothing lives. @@ -902,7 +901,7 @@ But this dove here senses the love-hawk floating above and waits and will not be driven or scared to safety. -S K Y- C I R C L E S +SKY-CIRCLES The way of love is not a subtle argument. The door there @@ -913,7 +912,7 @@ How do they learn that? They fall, and falling, they’re given wings. -I T H R O W I T A L L A W A Y +I THROW IT ALL You play with the great globe of union, you that see everyone so clearly and cannot be seen. Even universal @@ -924,7 +923,7 @@ Spring is a peacock flirting with revelation. The rose gardens flame. Ocean enters the boat. I throw it all away, except this love for Shams. -Y O U R F A C E +YOUR FACE You may be planning departure, as a human soul leaves the world taking almost all its sweetness with it. You saddle your horse. @@ -1043,7 +1042,7 @@ Love says to me, “Good, but you don’t see your own beauty. I am the wind that mixes in your fire, who stirs and brightens, then makes you gutter out.” -S M O K E +SMOKE Don’t listen to anything I say. I must enter the center of the fire. Fire is my child, but I must @@ -1058,8 +1057,7 @@ In the blackness those friends keep arguing. Like a wanderer with no face. Like the most powerful bird in existence sitting on its perch, refusing to move. - -I ’ M N O T S A Y I N G T H I S R I G H T +I'M NOT SAYING THIS RIGHT You bind me, and I tear away in a rage to open out into air, a round brightness, a candlepoint, @@ -1076,12 +1074,13 @@ A disbeliever hides disbelief, but I will say his secret. More and more awake, getting up at night, spinning and falling in love with Shams. -W H O S A Y S W O R D S W I T H M Y Who looks out with my eyes? What is +WHO SAYS WORDS WITH MY +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. -M O U T H ? +MOUTH? 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. @@ -1101,7 +1100,7 @@ beneath hurt and grief disappears into emptiness with a thousand new disguises. -A C A P T O W E A R I N B O T H W O R L D S +A CAP TO WEAR IN BOTH WORLDS There is a passion in me that doesn’t long for anything from another human being. I was given something else, a cap to wear @@ -1122,7 +1121,7 @@ of birds flying, each particle circulating on its own. Is the one I love everywhere? -F R I N G E +FRINGE You wreck my shop and my house and now my heart, but how can I run from what gives me life? I’m weary of personal worrying, in love @@ -1140,7 +1139,7 @@ but the police are drunk too. People in this town, we love them both like different chess pieces. -T H E A C H E A N D C O N F U S I O N +THE ACHE AND CONFUSION Near the end you saw rose and thorn together, evening and morning light commingling. You have broken many shapes and stirred @@ -1153,7 +1152,7 @@ Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absentminded. Someone sober will worry about things going badly. Let the lover be. -W O N D E R W I T H O U T W I L L P O W E R +WONDER WITHOUT WILLPOWER Love’s way becomes a pen sometimes writing g-sounds like gold or r-sounds like tomorrow in different calligraphy @@ -1174,7 +1173,7 @@ not to be resolved. You are not whole or ever complete. You are the wonder without willpower going where you want. -L I K E L I G H T O V E R T H I S P L A I N +LIKE LIGHT OVER THIS PLAIN A moth flying into the flame says with its wingfire, Try this. The wick with its knotted neck broken @@ -1198,7 +1197,7 @@ Everything begs with the silent rocks for you to be flung out like light over this plain, the presence of Shams. -C A N D L E L I G H T B E C O M E S M O T H +CANDLE LIGHT BECOMES MOTH Inside a lover’s heart there’s another world, and yet another. Inside the Friend of this community @@ -1209,7 +1208,7 @@ and there are other ladders as we walk the night hearing a voice that talks of forgiveness. Inside Shams’s universe candlelight itself becomes a moth to die in his candle. -T H E B A S K E T O F F R E S H B R E A D +THE BASKET OF FRESH BREAD If you want to learn theory, talk with theoreticians. That way is oral. When you learn a craft, practice it. @@ -1268,7 +1267,7 @@ be everyone. When you become that many, you’re nothing. Empty. -T H I S T O R T U R E +THIS TORTURE Why should we tell you our love stories when you spill them together like blood in the dirt? Love is a pearl lost on the ocean floor, @@ -1289,7 +1288,7 @@ Think that you’re gliding out from the face of a cliff like an eagle. Think you’re walking like a tiger walks by himself in the forest. You’re most handsome when you’re after food. -T H E P U B L I C B A T H +THE PUBLIC BATH Imagine the phenomenal world as a furnace heating water for the public bath. Some people carry baskets of dung @@ -1324,7 +1323,7 @@ and emptying out of purification. As the sun dries wet dung to make it ready to heat water, so dazzling sparks fly from the burning filth. -M A S H A L L A H +MASHALLAH There’s someone swaying by your side, lips that say Mashallah, Mashallah. Wonderful. God inside attraction. @@ -1338,7 +1337,7 @@ Say mercy, mercy to the one who guides your soul, who keeps time. Move, make a mistake, look up. Checkmate. -S P I R I T A N D B O DY +SPIRIT AND BODY Don’t feed both sides of yourself equally. The spirit and the body carry different loads and require different attentions. @@ -1348,7 +1347,7 @@ run loose in the pasture. Don’t make the body do what the spirit does best, and don’t put a big load on the spirit that the body could easily carry. -B R E A D M A K I N G +BREADMAKING There was a feast. The king was in his cups. He saw a learned scholar walking by. “Bring him in and give him some of this fine wine.” @@ -1407,7 +1406,7 @@ but it’s basically the same, and remember, the way you make love is the way God will be with you. -S E X U A L U R G E N C Y A N D T R U E V I R I L I T Y +SEXUAL URGENCY AND TRUE VIRILITY Someone offhand to the Caliph of Egypt, “The King of Mosul has a concubine like no other. She looks like this!” @@ -1552,7 +1551,7 @@ The intensity of the Captain’s libido is less than a husk compared to the Caliph’s nobility in ending the cycle of sowing lust and reaping secrecy and meanness. -T W O W AY S O F R U N N I N G +TWO WAYS OF RUNNING A certain man had a jealous wife and a very appealing maidservant. The wife was careful not to leave @@ -1623,7 +1622,7 @@ People who repress desires often turn, suddenly, into hypocrites. -C L O S E TO B E I N G T R U E +CLOSE TO BEING TRUE How can we know the divine qualities from within? If we know only through metaphors, it’s like when @@ -1634,7 +1633,7 @@ comes with being inside the pleasure. Whatever you say about mysteries, I know or I don’t know, both are close to being true. Neither is quite a lie. -W H AT H U R T S T H E S O U L ? +WHAT HURTS THE SOUL We tremble, thinking we’re about to dissolve into nonexistence, but nonexistence fears even more that it might be given human form! @@ -1655,13 +1654,14 @@ from the mystery tell us things. Love is the mother. We are her children. She shines inside us, visible-invisible, as we lose trust or feel it start to grow again. -H I D D E N Hiding is the hidden purpose +HIDDEN +Hiding is the hidden purpose of creation. Bury your seed and wait. After you die, all the thoughts you had will throng around like children. The heart is the secret inside -I N S I D E +INSIDE the secret. Call the secret language and never be sure what you conceal. It’s unsure @@ -1702,10 +1702,10 @@ in the pomegranate flowers. If you do not come, these do not matter. If you do come, these do not matter. -W H O M A K E S Who makes these changes? +WHO MAKES +Who makes these changes? I shoot an arrow right. It lands left. -T H E S E C H A N G E S ? I ride after a deer and find myself chased by a hog. I plot to get what I want @@ -1714,7 +1714,7 @@ I dig pits to trap others and fall in. I should be suspicious of what I want. -D R O W N I N G +DROWNING What can I say to someone so curled up with wanting, so constricted in his love? Break your pitcher @@ -1726,9 +1726,10 @@ Like a pure spirit lying down, pulling its body over it, like a bride her husband for a cover to keep her warm. -T H E D O G Now, what if a dog’s owner +THE DOG +Now, what if a dog’s owner were not able to control it? -P R O B L E M +PROBLEM A poor dervish might appear: the dog storms out. The dervish says, “I take refuge with God when the dog of arrogance attacks,” @@ -1741,7 +1742,7 @@ This is how animal energy becomes monstrous and ruins your life’s freshness and beauty. Think of taking this dog out to hunt! You’d be the quarry. -Z I K R +ZIKR A naked man jumps in the river, hornets swarming above him. The water is the zikr, remembering, There is no reality but God. @@ -1776,7 +1777,7 @@ Take hold the neck. Use a bridle. Be sensible. Then ride! There is a need for self-denial. Don’t be contemptuous of old obediences. They help. -T H E C O R E O F M A S C U L I N I T Y +THE CORE OF MASCULINITY The core of masculinity does not derive from being male, nor friendliness from those who console. @@ -1792,13 +1793,13 @@ Pray for a tough instructor to hear and act and stay within you. We have been busy accumulating solace. Make us afraid of how we were. -C L E A R B E I N G +CLEAR BEING I honor those who try to rid themselves of lying, who empty the self and have only clear being there. -T H E S O U L’ S F R I E N D +THE SOUL'S FRIEND Listen to your essential self, the Friend. When you feel longing, be patient, and also prudent, moderate with eating and drinking. @@ -1819,7 +1820,7 @@ Some invitations sound like the fowler’s whistle to the quail, friendly, but not quite how you remember the call of your soul’s Friend. -L O N G I N G +LONGING Longing is the core of mystery. Longing itself brings the cure. The only rule is, Suffer the pain. @@ -1830,7 +1831,7 @@ The morning wind spreads its fresh smell. We must get up to take that in, that wind that lets us live. Breathe, before it’s gone. -W H AT D R A W S YO U ? +WHAT DRAWS YOU? There are two types on the path, those who come against their will, the blindly religious, and those who obey out of love. @@ -1844,7 +1845,7 @@ into whatever draws them to God. Both are drawn from the source. Any motion is from the mover. Any love from the beloved. -F E A R +FEAR Everyone can see how they have polished the mirror of the self, which is done with the longings we’re given. @@ -1857,7 +1858,7 @@ for being human. In battle, one runs fearing for his life. Another, just as scared, turns and fights more fiercely. -A T E A C H E R ’ S PAY +A TEACHER'S PAY God has said Be moderate with eating and drinking, but never, Be satisfied when taking in light. God offers a teacher the treasures of the world, @@ -1867,7 +1868,7 @@ to be rewarded for what he does. A lover wants only to be in love’s presence, that ocean whose depth will never be known. -L O O K I N G I N TO T H E C R E E K +LOOKING INTO THE CREEK The way the soul is with the senses and the intellect is like a creek. When desire weeds grow thick, @@ -1887,7 +1888,7 @@ and it’s lucid dreaming. The gates made of light swing open. You see in. -T H E P O L I S H E R +THE POLISHER As everything changes overnight, I praise the breaking of promises. Whatever love wants, @@ -1910,7 +1911,7 @@ and separate beings too, as the polisher melts in the mirror’s face. -B U R N T K A B O B +BURNT KABOB Last year, I admired the wines. This, I’m wandering inside the red world. Last year, I gazed at the fire, @@ -1932,7 +1933,7 @@ quit being sad. Hear blessings dropping their blossoms around you. God. -S I T T I N G I N T H E O R C H A R D +SITTING IN THE ORCHARD A man sits in an orchard, fruit trees full and the vines plump. He has his head on his knee; his eyes are closed. @@ -1949,7 +1950,7 @@ We laugh and feel happy or sad over all this. Try instead to get a scent of the true orchard. Taste the vineyard within the vineyard. -T H E P R I N C E O F K A B U L +THE PRINCE OF KABUL Here is a story of a young prince who suddenly sees that the ambitious world is a big game of king of the mountain, a boy scrambling up @@ -2078,7 +2079,6 @@ compassion for this suffering?” He answers, “To your eyes this is a drought. To me, it’s a form of God’s joy. Everywhere in this desert I see green corn growing - waist-high, a sea-wilderness of young ears greener than leeks. I reach to touch them. How could I not! You and your friends @@ -2109,7 +2109,7 @@ from under a felt covering. Think how it will be when the whole thing is open to the air and sunlight! There are mysteries I’m not telling you. -T H E W R I S T +THE WRIST Who are you? The inner vision of consciousness? The heart? A sacred half-light, are you that? Do you grow gatherings? Are you a friend @@ -2127,12 +2127,12 @@ where one love story changes to another. I remember that with these words brought here by a falcon from the wrist of Shams. -T H E If the beloved is everywhere, +If the beloved is everywhere, the lover is a veil, but when living itself becomes the Friend, lovers disappear. -K I N G , T H E H A N D M A I D E N , A N D T H E D O C TO R +KING, THE HANDMAIDEN AND THE DOCTOR Do you know why your soul-mirror does not reflect as clearly as it might? Because rust has begun to cover it. @@ -2313,7 +2313,8 @@ Keep knocking, and the joy inside will eventually open a window and look out to see who’s there. -T H E G E N E R AT I O N S Yesterday the beauty of early dawn +THE GENERATIONS +Yesterday the beauty of early dawn came over me, and I wondered who my heart would reach toward. Then this morning again and you. Who @@ -2322,12 +2323,13 @@ ground move me mightily because they’re pregnant with love, love pregnant with God. These are the early morning generations I praise. -I P R A I S E -O N E S W AY I N G Love is not condescension, never +I PRAISE +ONE SWAYING +Love is not condescension, never that, nor books, nor any marking on paper, nor what people say of each other. Love is a tree with -B E I N G +BEING branches reaching into eternity and roots set deep in eternity, and no trunk! Have you seen it? @@ -2344,7 +2346,7 @@ Shams Tabriz, the secret of God. Held like this, to draw in milk, no will, tasting clouds of milk, never so content. -H A N G O V E R R E M O R S E +HANGOVER MORSE Muhammad said, “Three kinds of people are particularly pathetic. The powerful man out of power, the rich man with no money, @@ -2358,7 +2360,7 @@ the way he cries out for the majesty he’s lost, give me that longing! -S O U L , H E A R T, A N D B O DY O N E M O R N I N G +SOUL, HEART AND BODY ONE MORNING There’s a morning where presence comes over you, and you sing like a rooster in your earth-colored shape. Your heart hears and, no longer frantic, begins @@ -2392,7 +2394,7 @@ Judge a moth by the beauty of its candle. Shams is invisible because he is inside sight. He is the intelligent essence of what is everywhere at once, seeing. -H U S A M +HUSAM There is a way of passing away from the personal, a dying that makes one plural. A gnat lights in buttermilk to become nourishment @@ -2420,7 +2422,7 @@ they can die. A great soul approaches Shams. What are you doing here? Answer: What is there to do? -T H AT Q U I C K +THAT QUICK A lover looks at creekwater and wants to be that quick to fall, to kneel, then all the way down in full prostration. @@ -2433,7 +2435,7 @@ in the river! Your shame and fear are like felt layers covering coldness. Throw them off, and rush naked into the joy of death. -E M P T Y B O AT +EMPTY BOAT Some huge work goes on growing. How could one person’s words matter? Where you walk heads pop from the ground. @@ -2448,7 +2450,7 @@ In the slaughterhouse of love they kill only the best, none of the weak or deformed. Don’t run away from this dying. Whoever’s not killed for love is dead meat. -I T R U S T YO U +I TRUST YOU The soul is a newly skinned hide, bloody and gross. Work on it with manual discipline, and the bitter tanning acid of grief. @@ -2462,7 +2464,6 @@ when you’re beaten, when you hear Checkmate, and can finally say with Hallaj’s voice, I trust you to kill me. -I M A D U ’ L - M U L K Remember the story of the king who is so enraged with his close friend that he’s about to kill him! A privileged intercessor, Imadu’l-Mulk, steps in @@ -2530,7 +2531,6 @@ out of love poems is not to tell the full truth. Auden is gay, too, in all senses, which adds more depths to his cultural work. -K H A R R A Q A N I ’ S M A R R I A G E The young seeker wonders, How could a teacher lie with that woman! Can a guide agree with a thief? @@ -2553,7 +2553,7 @@ and between them something gets settled. Between Pharaoh and Moses, the Red Sea.” -H A R S H E V I D E N C E +HARSH EVIDENCE What sort of person says that he or she wants to be polished and pure, then complains about being handled roughly? @@ -2566,7 +2566,7 @@ Kiss the snake to discover the treasure! Don’t run from those who scold, and don’t turn away from cleansing conflict, or you will remain weak. -T H E S T U P I D T H I N G S I ’ V E D O N E +THE STUPID THINGS I'VE DONE Let your sunlight shine on this piece of dung, and dry it out, so I can be used for fuel to warm a bathhouse. @@ -2576,7 +2576,7 @@ The sun does this with the ground. Think what glories God can make from the fertilizer of sinning! -C A N D L E AT N O O N +CANDLE AT NOON A man is wandering the marketplace at noon with a candle in his hand, totally ecstatic. “Hey,” calls a shopkeeper, “is this a joke? @@ -2585,14 +2585,14 @@ Who are you looking for?” “Well, there are plenty to choose from.” “But I want one who can be in anger and desire and still be a true human being in the same moment.” -D E R V I S H E S +DERVISHES When school and mosque and minaret get torn down, then dervishes can begin their community. Not until faithfulness turns to betrayal and betrayal into trust can any human being become part of the truth. -D O V E S +DOVES People want you to be happy. Don’t keep serving them your pain! @@ -2600,7 +2600,8 @@ If you could untie your wings and free your soul of jealousy, you and everyone around you would fly up like doves. -W H E N W O R D S A R E T I N G E D W I T H Muhammad gave this indication of how to know +WHEN WORDS ARE TINGED WITH +Muhammad gave this indication of how to know what’s real. “When you feel a peaceful joy, you’re near the truth. Unquiet and off center, jealous or greedy, @@ -2608,13 +2609,13 @@ then what you do seems pretentious and those around you insincere. Speak the clearest truth you know, and let the uneasiness heal.” -LY I N G +LYING When words are tinged with lying, they’re like water dripping into an oil lamp. The wick won’t light, and the pleasure of your love room will diminish. -T H E R E YO U A R E +THERE YOU ARE You’re inside every kindness. When a sick person feels better, you’re that, and the onset of disease too. You’re sudden, @@ -2695,7 +2696,7 @@ to every question. If you want to live your soul, find a friend like Shams and stay near. -T H E L O O K T H AT O P E N S +THE LOOK THAT OPENS We wait for inspiration and ask no fee, the feel of sacred ambiance being enough. So bring your malaise, your dullness, @@ -2703,7 +2704,7 @@ your callous ingratitude. As we meet you, the coming together itself will be medicine. We are the cure, the look that opens your looking. -S T R A W A N D G R A S S E S +STRAW AND GRASSES There is no reality but God, says the completely surrendered teacher, who is an ocean for all beings. @@ -2736,7 +2737,7 @@ at cats late at night. I have turned over a garbage can and eaten chicken bones.” But Lithgow’s face is so close to their faces and his intoning such, that the dogs begin to bark with the fun of it. It’s hilarious, us forgiving them. -T H E O C E A N S U R G E +THE OCEAN SURGE I want to be in such passionate adoration that my tent gets pitched against the sky! Let the beloved come and sit @@ -2744,7 +2745,7 @@ like a guard dog in front of the tent. When the ocean surges, don’t let me just hear it. Let it splash inside my chest! -L O V E D O G S +LOVE DOGS One night a man was crying Allah! Allah! His lips grew sweet with praising, until a cynic said, “So! @@ -2778,7 +2779,7 @@ No better love than love with no object, no more satisfying work than work with no purpose. If you could give up tricks and cleverness, that would be the cleverest trick! -A G R E AT W A G O N + When I see your face, the stones start spinning! You appear; all studying wanders. I lose my place. @@ -2795,7 +2796,8 @@ as spring begins to move like a great wagon. Drive slowly. Some of us walking alongside are lame. -B L A S P H E M Y A N D T H E My soul keeps whispering, “Quickly, +BLASPHEMY AND THE +My soul keeps whispering, “Quickly, be a wandering dervish, a salamander sitting in its homefire. Walk about watching the burning turn to roses. @@ -2807,8 +2809,8 @@ ruins and cemetery trees. They can’t help but fly there. For us this day is friends sitting together with silence shining in our faces.” -C O R E - +CORE + You’re song, a wished-for song. Go through the ear to the center @@ -2835,7 +2837,7 @@ looking for the center, unable to find it, draws a blade, strikes anywhere. -W O O D E N C A G E S +WOODEN CAGES I may be clapping my hands, but I don’t belong to a crowd of clappers. Neither this nor that, I’m not part @@ -2858,7 +2860,7 @@ I don’t want anything from anybody. I flow through human beings. Love is my only companion. -M O R E R A N G E +MORE RANGE We’re friends with one who kills us, who gives us to the ocean waves. We love this death. Only ignorance @@ -2874,11 +2876,12 @@ they’re doing every moment and why. Submit to love without thinking, as the sun rose this morning recklessly extinguishing our star-candle minds. -AYA Z A N D T H E K I N G ’ S One day the king assembled his courtiers, +AYAZ AND THE KING'S +One day the king assembled his courtiers, He handed the minister a glowing pearl. “What would you say this is worth?” than a hundred donkeys could carry.” -P E A R L +PEARL “More gold “Break it!” @@ -2942,7 +2945,7 @@ through here. I feel stunned in this abundance, crushed and dead. -H A L L A J +HALLAJ Hallaj said what he said and went to the origin through the hole in the scaffold. I cut a cap’s worth of cloth from his robe, @@ -2967,7 +2970,7 @@ has decided to wear me home!” A little part of a story, a hint. Do you need long sermons on Hallaj? -T H E S O U R C E O F J OY +THE SOURCE OF JOY No one knows what makes the soul wake up so happy! Maybe a dawn breeze has blown the veil from the face of God. @@ -2986,7 +2989,7 @@ Shams sails down clods of dirt from the roof, and we take jobs as doorkeepers for him. -R O S E S U N D E R F O OT +ROSE UNDER FOOT The sound of salaams rising as waves diminish down in prayer, hoping for some trace of the one @@ -3007,18 +3010,19 @@ How to say this to someone who denies it? The robe we wear is the sky’s cloth. Everything is soul and flowering. -P O E T R Y +POETRY I open and fill with love and what is not love evaporates. All the learning in books stays put on the shelf. Poetry, the dear words and images of song, comes down over me like mountain water. -B I R D S O N G F R O M I N S I D E T H E Sometimes a lover of God may faint +BIRD SONGS FROM INSIDE +Sometimes a lover of God may faint in the presence. Then the beloved bends and whispers in his ear, “Beggar, spread out your robe. I’ll fill it with gold. -E G G +EGG I’ve come to protect your consciousness. Where has it gone? Come back!” This fainting is because lovers want so much. @@ -3037,7 +3041,7 @@ like birdsong beginning inside the egg, like this universe coming into existence, the lover wakes and whirls in a dancing joy, then kneels down in praise. -E A S T E R N M Y S T E R Y +EASTERN MYSTERY I ask for the laughing, unconventional ones, even them, to be broken, for blood and sky to become one thing, @@ -3054,7 +3058,7 @@ and find those who resemble Shams, who made Tabriz a source of Eastern mystery like China. -N O F L A G +NO FLAG I used to want buyers for my words. Now I wish someone would buy me away from words. I’ve made a lot of charmingly profound images, @@ -3086,7 +3090,7 @@ with dignified authority, we are charlatans. Or maybe just a goat’s-hair brush in a painter’s hand. We have no idea what we are. -M O S E S A N D T H E S H E P H E R D +MOSES AND THE SHEPERD Moses heard a shepherd on the road praying, “God, where are you? I want to help you, to fix your shoes @@ -3195,7 +3199,7 @@ how blind that was. Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along. -M O R N I N G W I N D +MORNING WIND Wine so bitter all bitterness sweetens, a beautiful face growing old. The taste of @@ -3211,7 +3215,7 @@ we’ll stay quiet. Whatever you have understood of us, go and tell that to the living, what we’ve been hiding from them. -T H E O C E A N ’ S M OT I O N +THE OCEAN'S MOTION Love is an ocean. This wide sky, a bit of foam on that. Restless as Zuleikha @@ -3222,7 +3226,6 @@ everything would freeze and be still. Instead, inorganic grains are entering plants. Plants enter animals; - animals enter spirit, and spirit sacrifices itself for one breath @@ -3232,7 +3235,7 @@ winds like a locust swarm its wingrush toward perfection, each particle purified in a song of praise for motion. -I G N O R A N C E +IGNORANCE I didn’t know love would make me this crazy, with my eyes like the river Ceyhun @@ -3261,7 +3264,7 @@ in the ocean has made me completely content with ignorance. -E Y E S +EYES What is it that sees when vision is clear? The core that has no story, has that ever seen anything? Surely vision has loyalties. @@ -3289,7 +3292,7 @@ When you feel your lips becoming infinite and sweet, like a moon in a sky, when you feel that spaciousness inside, Shams of Tabriz will be there too. -T H E G R A N A R Y +THE GRANARY Sufi masters are those whose spirits existed before the world. Before the body, they lived many lifetimes. Before seeds @@ -3334,7 +3337,7 @@ an ant that’s gotten into the granary, ludicrously happy, and trying to lug out a grain that’s way too big. -T H E G A Z I N G - H O U S E +THE GAZING-HOUSE On the night when you cross the street from your shop and your house to the cemetery, you’ll hear me hailing you from inside @@ -3368,7 +3371,7 @@ shall we call this new kind of gazing-house that has opened in our town where people sit quietly and pour out their glancing like light, like answering? -T H E G U E S T H O U S E +THE GUEST HOUSE This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, @@ -3395,7 +3398,7 @@ until it’s changing to gold. Your loving doesn’t know majesty, until it knows its helplessness. -T H E O N E T H I N G YO U M U S T D O +THE ONE THING YOU MUST DO There is one thing in this world you must never forget to do. If you forget everything else and not this, there’s nothing to worry about, but if you @@ -3427,7 +3430,7 @@ monial dagger and hammers it into a post for a peg to hold his dipper gourd. You’ll be wasting valuable keenness and forgetting your dignity and purpose. -T H I S W E H A V E N O W +THIS WE HAVE NOW This we have now is not imagination. This is not grief,