Rumi²

The two poems below, written by Persian mystic Rumi 800 years ago, seem to transcend Islam and speak to a more universal religion.  In particular, the last four lines of "Flood Residue" and the opening of "As Ripeness Comes" sound quite a bit like Hinduism:

 

Flood Residue
from The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks ©2004
 
The taste of today is not that of yesterday.
A pot boils over.
 
A watchman calls down the ladder,
Did you hear the commotion last night
from the seventh level?
 
Saturn turns to Venus and tells her
to play the strings more gently.
Taurus milk runs red.  Leo slinks from the sky.
 
Strange signs, because of a word
that comes from the soul
to help us escape speaking and concepts.
 
I answer the nightwatchman,
You will have to assign meaning
For these ominous events.
 
I have been set free from the hunt,
the catching and being caught,
to rest in these dregs
of flood residue, pure and empty.

As Ripeness Comes
from The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks ©2004

What souls desire arrives.
We are standing up to our necks
in the sacred pool.  Majesty is here.

The grains of the earth take in something
they do not understand.

Where did this come from?
It comes from where your longing comes.

From which direction?
As ripeness comes to fruit.

This answer lights a candle
in the chest of anyone who hears.

Most people only look for the way when they hurt.
Pain is a fine path to the unknowable.

But today is different.
Today the quality we call splendor
puts on human clothes, walks through the door,
closes it behind, and sits down with us
in this companionship.

…with nothing in their hands.

Sweet Talked Into Connection
from The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks ©2004

Stay with your family.
Do not wander away.

If you are an arc of the moon,
live the full circle.

Why should a part be coy with the whole?
Do you want compliments?
Do you want to be lied to?

As a genus branches and becomes a species,
so the unseen reaches here.

It's a constant natural process,
but you want to be sweet-talked
into connection.

It would be better
if a spirit-king slapped you awake.

Don't avoid discipline.
You have learned ways to make a living
for your body.  Now learn to support
your soul.  You wear fine clothing.
How do you dress your spirit?

This world is a playground
where children pretend to have shops.

Sometimes when they wrestle,
it may look like sex,
but none of it's real.

They exchange imaginary money.
Night comes, and they go home tired
with nothing in their hands.

3

 I like to have three books going at once: one challenging, one light, and one book of poems.

I've started on the novels of Jean Rhys, and that's my challenging one-- not in the sense that she's hard to understand, but that her topics are serious. I'm just beginning, but my first impression is that her style is similar to J.D. Salinger's. I love her use of repetition.

My light one is Dewey by Vicki Myron, the story of a library cat and the woman who cares for him. It's not overly sentimental, but there are a lot of Awww… moments.

And my book of poetry is a rereading of The Essential Rumi translated by Coleman Barks. Rumi is remarkably accessible, considering he lived in Persia 800 years ago.

It's a good idea to read poems at different times in your life. The poem you loved as a teenager and the poem that strikes you as an adult are seldom the same.

It Doesn't Matter

Where Everything Is Music
by Rumi

Don’t worry about saving these songs!
And if one of our instruments breaks,
it doesn’t matter.

We have fallen into the place
where everything is music.

The strumming and the flute notes
rise into the atmosphere,
and even if the whole world’s harp
should burn up, there will still be
hidden instruments playing.

So the candle flickers and goes out.
We have a piece of flint, and a spark.

This singing art is sea foam.
The graceful movements come from a pearl
somewhere on the ocean floor.

Poems reach up like spindrift and the edge
of driftwood along the beach, wanting!

They derive
from a slow and powerful root
that we can’t see.

Stop the words now.
Open the window in the center of your chest,
and let the spirits fly in and out.

Playing the Part

 

And that reminded me of this:

From Shakespeare's As You Like It:

    All the world's a stage,
    And all the men and women merely Players;
    They have their exits and their entrances,
    And one man in his time plays many parts,
    His Acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
    Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
    Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
    And shining morning face, creeping like snail
    Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
    Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
    Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
    Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
    Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
    Seeking the bubble reputation
    Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
    In fair round belly with good capon lined,
    With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
    Full of wise saws and modern instances;
    And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
    Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
    With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
    His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
    For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
    Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
    And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
    That ends this strange eventful history,
    Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
    Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Light

"When light returns to its source, it takes nothing of what it has illuminated."  ~Rumi

This should be in the bible:

Come, Come, Whoever You Are
Wonderer, worshipper, lover of leaving.
It doesn't matter.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vow
a thousand times
Come, yet again, come, come.

~Rumi

 

Have No Effect

 Excerpted from the poem "How Finite Minds Most Want To Be" by Rumi:

Metaphors mentioning the moon
have no effect upon the moon

Come, come!

Come, come, whoever you are.
Wanderer, worshipper, lover of living, it doesn't matter
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come even if you have broken your vow a thousand times,
Come, yet again, come, come.

WikiQuote has a large collection of sourced Rumi poems and quotes, which is available on the web HERE.

Project Gutenberg has three books of Rumi's poems available to read online or download for free, and you can access their collection HERE.

Epitaph

The epitaph on Rumi's grave reads, "When we are dead, seek not our tomb in the earth, but find it in the hearts of men."

I like that.

Idle Amusement

Excerpted from "In Baghdad, Dreaming of Cairo; in Cairo, Dreaming of Baghdad" by Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks:

The Prophet has said
that a true seeker must be completely empty like a lute
to make the sweet music of Lord, Lord.

When the emptiness starts to get filled with something,
the one who plays the lute puts it down
and picks up another.

There is nothing more subtle and delightful
than to make that music.

Stay empty and hold
between those fingers, where where
gets drunk with nowhere.

This man was empty,
and the tears came. His habitual stubborness
dissolved. This is way with many seekers.

They moan in prayer, and the perfumed smoke of that
floats into heaven, and the angels say, "Answer
this prayer. This worshipper has only you
and nothing else to depend on. Why do you go first
to the prayers of those less devoted?"

God says,
"By deferring my generosity I am helping him.
His need dragged him by the hair into my presence.
If I satisfy that, he'll go back to being absorbed
in some idle amusement. Listen now how passionate he is!
That torn-open cry is way he should live."

One

 "I go into the Muslim mosque and the Jewish synagogue and the Christian church and I see one altar."  ~Rumi

Somber Dignity

I used to be shy.
You made me sing.

I used to refuse things at table.
Now I shout for more wine.

In somber dignity, I used to sit
on my mat and pray.

Now children run through
and make faces at me.

~Rumi

YOU

 "If everything around seems dark, look again:  you may be the light."  ~Rumi 

Many Times

"The water in the stream may have changed many times, but the reflection of the moon and the stars remains the same.” ~Rumi

Help

"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone’s soul heal."  ~Rumi

Listen:

“But listen to me. For one moment quit being sad. Hear blessings dropping their blossoms around you.”  ~Rumi

different/same

“The lamps are different, but the light is the same.”  ~Rumi (via)

I have no idea.

I think it speaks to the universality of the human experience that a 13^th century Persian poet can resonate with a 21^st century Western audience.

I'm especially fond of the line, "Whoever brought me here will have to take me home."  It sounds like a line Robert Hunter would write, and the Grateful Dead would interpret.

Who Speaks With My Mouth?
by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
translated by Coleman Barks

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.

(It may help to know that in Rumi's time and place, drunkenness was often used as a metaphor for spiritual ecstasy.)

Your are not a prophet. But:

The Mouse and the Camel

by Rumi
Translated by Coleman Barks

A mouse caught hold of a camel’s lead rope
in his two forelegs and walked off with it,
imitating the camel drivers.

The camel went along,
letting the mouse feel heroic.
"Enjoy yourself,"
he thought. "I have something to teach you, presently."

They came to the edge of a great river.
The mouse was dumbfounded.

"What are you waiting for?
Step forward into the river. You are my leader.
Don’t stop here."

"I’m afraid of being drowned."

The camel walked into the water.  "It’s only
just above the knee."

"Your knee!  Your knee
is a hundred times over my head!"

"Well, maybe you shouldn't be
leading a camel.  Stay with those like yourself.
A mouse has nothing really to say to a camel."

"Would you help me get across?"

"Get up on my hump.  I am made to take hundreds like you across."

You are not a prophet, but go humbly on the way of the prophets

and you can arrive where they are.  Don’t try to steer the boat.
Don’t open a shop by yourself.  Listen. Keep silent.
You are not God’s mouthpiece.  Try to be an ear;
and if you do speak, ask for explanations.

The source of your arrogance and anger is your lust
and the rootedness of that is in your habits.

Someone who makes a habit of eating clay
gets mad when you try to keep him from it.
Being a leader can also be a poisonous habit,
so that when someone questions your authority,
you think, "He’s trying to take over."
You may respond courteously, but inside you rage.

Always check your inner state
with the Lord of your Heart.
Copper doesn't know it’s copper,
until it’s changed to gold.

Your loving doesn't know its majesty,
until it knows its helplessness.