Rumi – A sneak peak!

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I said: What about my eyes?

God said: Keep them on the road.

I said: What about my passion?

God said: Keep it burning.

I said: what about my heart?

God said: Tell me what you hold inside?

I said: Pain and sorrow.

He said: Stay with it.

The wound is the place where the light enters you.

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There is a community of the spirit

Join it and feel the delight

Of walking in the noisy street

And being the noise

Drink all your passion, And be a disgrace

Close both eyes, To see with the other eye.

Open your hands, If you want to be held.

Sit down in the circle

Quit acting like a wolf and feel the shepherd’s love filling you

At night your beloved wonders

Don’t accept consolations

Close your mouth against food.

Taste the lovers mouth in yours.

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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, theres no future for us,

They are right

Which is fine with us.

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WHO SAYS WORDS WITH MY MOUTH

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 somewhere else, I am sure of that

And I intend to end up there

This drunkenness began in some other tavern

When I get back 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 sip 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 am going to say

 I don’t plan it

When I am outside the saying of it,

I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.

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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

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For a while we lived with people, but we saw no sign

In them of the faithfulness we wanted

Its better to hide completely within as water hides In metal,

As fire hides in rock.

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Not Christian or jew or muslim,

not hindu or Buddhist, Sufi or zen

Not any religion or cultured system

I am not from east or the west, not out of the ocean

Or up from the ground

Not natural or ethereal,

Not composed of elements at all

I do not exist, am not an entity in this world or the next

Did not descend from adam or eve or any origin story

My place is placeless, a trace of the traceless

Neither body nor soul

I belong to the beloved, have seen the two worlds as one

And that one call to and know

First, last, outer, inner, only that breath breathing human being

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What the material world values doesn’t shine the same in the truth of the soul

You have been interested in your shadow, look instead directly at the sun.

What can we know just by watching the time and space shapes of each other?

Someone half awake in the night sees imaginary dangers,

The morning star rises, the horizon grows defined

People become friends in a moving caravan

Night birds may think day break a kind of darkness

because that’s all they know

It’s a fortunate bird who’s not intrigued with evening

Who flies in the sun we call shams

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Go back, go back to sleep

Yes, you are allowed

You, who have no love in your heart

You can go back to sleep

The power of love is exclusive to us,

You can go back to sleep

I have been burnt by the fire of love

You who have no yearning in your heart

Go back to sleep

The path of love, has seventy-two folds and countless facets

Your love and religion is all about deceit, control and hypocrisy,

Go back to sleep

I have torn to pieces my robe of speech

And have let go of the desire to converse

You, who are not nacked yet

You can go back to sleep.

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You think of yourself as a citizen of the universe

You think you belong to this world of dust and matter

Out of this dust you have created a personal image

And have forgotten about the essence of your true origin.

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Do you know what you are?

You are a manuscript of a divine letter

You are a mirror reflecting a noble face

This universe is not outside of you.

Look inside of yourself,

Everything that you want

You are already that.

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Hush don’t say anything to god

See my ashen face

Feel my ceaseless pain

And don’t say anything to god

See my bleeding heart

My eyes flowing like a roaring river

All that you see, let it pass you by

And don’t say anything to God

Last night, your spirit came to the house of my heart,

Knocked on the door and said

Come-on open-up,

And hush don’t say anything to god.

I bit my hands when I say you

I said yearning for you is all too painfull

He said, I belong only to you

Let your hands drop

And hush, don’t say anything to god

He said: you are my sornaa

You cant cry without my lips touching you

Wait, for I will play you like a harp,

Until then, about my melody,

Don’t say anything.

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When you do things from your soul

You feel a river moving in you, a joy

When actions come from another section, the feeling disappears

Don’t let others lead you

They may be blind or worse, vultures

Reach for the rope of god. And what is that?

Putting aside self-will

Because of willfulness, people sit in jail

The trapped bird’d wings are tied

Fish sizzle in the skillet

The anger of police is willfulness

You have seen a magistrate inflict visible punishment

Now see the invisible

If you could leave your selfishness,

You would see how you have been torturing your soul

We are born and live inside a black water in a well

How could we know what an open field of sunlight is?

Don’t insist on going where you think you want to go

Ask the way to the spring

Your living pieces will form a harmony

There is a moving place that floats in the air with balconies and clear water flowing through

Infinity everywhere

Yet contained under a single tent.

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But yester‐eve a lamp in hand

The Shaykh did all the city span,

Sick of mere ghosts he sought a man,

But could find none in all the land.

“I Rustam or a Hyder seek

I’m sick of snails, am sick,” he said,

“There’s none,” said I. He shook his head,

“There’s none like them, but still I seek.”

—Rumi