RUMI DAYS

A Full Year of Rumi Readings

2011-03-11T00:01:00.220-05:00

Was there a beginning to this journey? Is there an end?

I began to post daily readings here from the book A Year with Rumi on March 11, 2010. Odd, I know, to start in the third month of the year, but what can I say, I'm a late bloomer. I have now completed a full year of posts. Rumi said:

Do not grieve. Anything you lose
comes round in another form.

As ever, I will continue at my main blog, the eclectic synch-ro-ni-zing, where I express my own deeply felt connections with the world, as well as at the blog that the artful and soulful Lorenzo of The Alchemist's Pillow and I co-host, A Year with Rilke, where the readings of poems and prose excerpts by Rainer Maria Rilke and commenter discussions are as spiritually resonant as anything I've found in Rumi. I heartily invite you to these blogs where you will be most welcome to read quietly or add to the discussions.

I have loved the quiet meditation of typing up Rumi's words via Coleman Barks' earthy and sublimely unpretentious translations, and I will miss the practice. But now, I can come and read them again, meeting them like new friends.

You can still read daily. I have formatted the archives daily, so you can click on 2010, then October, then October 11, for example. This way, you can continue to read Rumi daily if you wish. Search poem titles, words and phrases in the "Search the Archives" box on the sidebar. Unfortunately, you can't search dates, since they are not in the text of the posts, and therefore dates such as "October 11" are not searchable.

I feel obliged to plug the book these readings are from. Click on the book on the sidebar to go to the publisher's page. The book is available online and on land in local bookstores.

Thank you for riding with me here in this caravan of rubies and sunrises, in which we stop off each evening in a different caravanserai . . .

Come, come, whoever you are.
Wanderer, idolator, worshipper of fire, come even though
you have broken your vows a thousand times,
Come, and come yet again. Ours is not a caravan of despair.

~ Jalal ad-Dīn Muhammad Rumi

The lines above are inscribed
on Rumi's shrine in Konya, Turkey.
Followers of Rumi call the day he passed away,
December 17, 1273,
his "Wedding Night"
because he was united with the Beloved.

This epitaph is also there,
and again are his words:

When we are dead,
seek not our tomb in the earth,
but find it in the hearts of men.

Buoyancy

2011-03-10T00:01:00.011-05:00

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.

To praise the sun is to praise your own eyes.

Praise, the ocean. What we say, a little ship.

So the sea-journey goes on, and who knows where?

Just to be held by the ocean is the best luck

we could have. It is a total waking-up.

Why should we grieve that we have been sleeping?

It does not matter how long we've been unconscious.

We are groggy, but let the guilt go.

Feel the motions of tenderness

around you, the bouyancy.

The You Pronoun

2011-03-09T00:01:00.007-05:00

Someone asked once, What is love?

Be lost in me, I said. You will know love when that happens.

Love has no calculating in it. That is why it is said to be a quality of God and not of human beings.

God loves you is the only possible sentence. The subject becomes the object so totally that it can't be turned around. Who will the you pronoun stand for if you say, You love God?

The Lame Goat

2011-03-08T00:01:00.010-05:00

Goat sculpture from found objects, by Picasso

You have seen a herd of goats

going down to the water.

The lame and dreamy goat

brings up the rear.

There are worried faces about that one,

but now they're laughing,

because look, as they return,

that one is leading.

There are many different ways of knowing.

The lame goat's kind is a branch

that traces back to the roots of presence.

Learn from the lame goat,

and lead the herd home.

A Tender Agony of Parting

2011-03-07T00:01:00.006-05:00

A craftsman pulled a reed from the reedbed,

cut holes in it, and called it a human being.

Since then, it has been wailing

a tender agony of parting,

never mentioning the skill

that gave it life as a flute.

The Milk of Millenia

2011-03-06T00:01:00.006-05:00

I am part of the load

not rightly balanced.

I drop off in the grass

like the old cave-sleepers, to browse

wherever I fall.

For hundreds of thousands of years I have been dustgrains

floating and flying in the will of the air,

often forgetting ever being

in that state, but in sleep

I migrate back. I spring loose

from the four-branched, time-and-space cross,

this waiting room.

I walk out into a huge pasture.

I nurse the milk of millenia.

Everyone does this in different ways.

Knowing that conscious decisions

and personal memory

are much too small a place to live,

every human being streams at night

into the loving nowhere, or during the day,

in some absorbing work.

Strange Frenzy

2011-03-05T00:01:00.004-05:00

There is a strange frenzy in my head,

of birds flying,

each particle circulating on its own.

Is the one I love everywhere?

This World Which is Made of Our Love for Emptiness

2011-03-04T00:01:00.006-05:00

Praise to the emptiness that blanks out existence.

Existence: this place made from our love

for that emptiness!

Yet somehow comes emptiness,

this existence goes.

Praise to that happening over and over.

For years I pulled my own existence out of emptiness.

Then one swoop, one swing of the arm,

that work is over.

Free of who I was, free of presence, free

of dangerous fear, hope, free

of mountainous wanting.

These words I am saying so much begin to lose meaning.

Existence, emptiness, mountain, straw.

Words and what they try to say,

swept out the window, down the slant of the roof.

The Tent

2011-03-03T00:01:00.004-05:00

Outside, the freezing desert night.

This other night inside grows warm, kindling.

Let the landscape be covered with thorny crust.

We have a soft garden in here.

The continents blasted,

cities and little towns, everything

become a scorched, blackened ball.

The news we hear is full of grief for that future,

but the real news inside here

is there's no news at all.

There is Some Kiss We Want

2011-03-02T00:01:00.004-05:00

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.

At night, I open the window

and ask the moon to come

and press its face against mine.

Breathe into me.

Close the language-door

and open the love-window.

The moon won't use the door,

only the window.

I Have Five Things to Say

2011-03-01T00:01:00.001-05:00

I have five things to say,

five fingers to give into your grace.

First, when I was apart from you,

this world did not exist, nor any other.

Second, whatever I was looking for was always you.

Third, why did I ever learn to count to three?

Fourth, my cornfield is burning!

Fifth, this finger stands for Rabia, and this

is for someone else. Is there a difference?

Are these words or tears?

Is weeping speech? What shall I do, my love?

So he speaks, and everyone around

begins to cry with him, laughing crazily,

moaning in the spreading union of lover and beloved.

This is the true religion. All others

are thrown-away bandages beside it.

This is the sema of slavery and mastery

dancing together. This is not-being.

I know these dancers. Day and night

I sing their songs in this phenomenal cage.

Body Intelligence (2)

2011-02-28T00:01:00.002-05:00

Elephant and Rider, Indian, circa 1640
Metropolitan Museum of Art

There are guides

who can show you the way.

Use them.

But they will not satisfy your longing.

Keep wanting the connection with presence

with all your pulsing energy.

The throbbing vein

will take you further

than any thinking.

Muhammed said, Do not theorize

about essence. All speculations

are just more layers of covering.

Human beings love coverings.

They think the designs on the curtains

are what is being concealed.

Observe the wonders as they occur around you.

Do not claim them. Feel the artistry

moving through, and be silent.

Body Intelligence (1)

2011-02-27T00:01:00.000-05:00

Three Capetian French scholars

consulting an astrolabe, ca. AD 1200

Your intelligence is always with you,

overseeing your body, even though

you may not be aware of its work.

If you start doing something

against your health, your intelligence

will eventually scold you.

If it had not been so lovingly close by,

and so constantly monitoring,

how could it rebuke?

You and your body's intelligence

are like the beauty and precision

of an astrolabe.

Together, you calculate how near

existence is to the sun.

Your intelligence is marvelously intimate.

It is not in front of you or behind,

or to the left or the right.

Now, my friend, try to describe how near

is the creator of your intelligence.

Red

2011-02-26T00:01:00.001-05:00

Red with shyness, the red

that became all the rosegarden reds.

The red distance,

red of the stove boiling water,

red of the mountain turning bloodred,

a mountain holding rubies secretly inside.

Do I love more you

or your modesty?

My Worst Habit

2011-02-25T00:01:00.002-05:00

My worst habit is I get so tired of winter

I become a torture to those I'm with.

If you are not here, nothing grows.

I lack clarity. My words

tangle and knot up.

How to cure bad water? 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.

Red Shirt

2011-02-24T00:01:00.015-05:00

Portrait of the Boy Eutyches

Egyptian, A.D. 100-150

Has anyone seen the boy who used to come here?

Round-faced troublemaker, quick to find a joke, slow

to be serious. Red shirt,

perfect coordination, sly,

strong muscles, with things always in his pocket.

Reed flute, ivory pick, polished

and ready for his talent.

You know that one.

Have you heard stories about him?

Pharoah and the whole Egyptian world

collapsed for such a Joseph.

I would gladly spend years getting word

of him, even third- or fourth-hand.

* * *

This reading is poignant for me today,

partly because of the recent triumphs in Egypt.

Today is also the 15th anniversary of the day

my redheaded (not redshirted) brother passed away at age 47;
except for the flute, every word of the first stanza is true of him!

He visited the pyramids at Giza in 1969
and took some beautiful photographs of them and the Sphinx.
I wish I had one here to scan and show you.

Bennett Williams Hart
b. June 28, 1948 d. February 24, 1996

When I Am with You

2011-02-23T00:01:00.009-05:00

The Moonrise, Mamaroneck, by Edward J. Steichen

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

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

Praise God for these two insomnias.

And the difference between them.

The Grasses

2011-02-22T00:01:00.000-05:00

The same wind that uproots trees

makes the grasses shine.

The lordly wind loves the weakness

and the lowness of grasses.

The axe doesn't worry how thick the branches are.

It cuts them to pieces. But not the leaves.

It leaves the leaves alone.

The motion of the body, the inhaling-exhaling,

comes from the spirit, now angry, now peaceful.

Wind destroys, and wind protects.

There is no reality but God,

says the completely surrendered sheikh,

who is an ocean for all beings.

The levels of creation are straws in that ocean.

The movement of the straws comes from an agitation

in the water. When the ocean wants the straws calm,

it sends them close to shore. When it wants them

back in the deep surge, it does with them

as the wind does with the grasses.

Dark Sweetness

2011-02-21T00:01:00.002-05:00

The ground turns green. A drum begins.

Commentaries on the heart arrive in seven volumes.

The pen puts its head down

to give a dark sweetness to the page.

Planets go wherever they want.

Venus sways near the North Star.

The moon holds on to Leo.

The host who has no self is here.

We look into each other's eyes.

A child is still a child

even after it has learned the alphabet.

Solomon lifts his morning cup to the mountains.

Sit down in this pavilion,

and don't listen to religious bickering.

Be silent as we absorb the spring.

Imagining Is Like

2011-02-20T00:01:00.000-05:00

Imagining is like feeling around

in a dark lane, or washing

your eyes with blood.

You are the truth

from foot to brow. Now,

what else would you like to know?

Talking through the Door (2)

2011-02-19T00:01:00.005-05:00

Sala de los Secretos, The Alhambra Palace
(Whispering Chamber)
Granada, Spain
Photo from Wiki Commons

Then you asked, Where have you been most comfortable?

In the palace.

What did you see there?

Amazing things.

Then why is it so desolate?

Because all that can be taken away in a second.

Who can do that?

This clear discernment.

Where can you live safely?

In surrender.

Is there no threat of disaster?

Only what comes in your street,

inside your love.

Now silence. If I tell you more of this conversation,

those listening would leave themselves.

There would be no more door,

no roof or windows either.

Talking through the Door (1)

2011-02-18T00:01:00.005-05:00

Patio de los Arrayanes, The Alhambra
Granada, Spain
Photo from Wiki Commons

You said, Who's at the door?

I said, Your slave.

You said, What do you want?

To see you and bow.

We talked through the door. I claimed

a great love and that I had given up

what the world gives to be in that love.

You said, Such claims require a witness.

I said, This longing, these tears.

You said, Discredited witnesses.

I said, Surely not.

You said, Who did you come with?

This majestic imagination you gave me,

Why did you come?

The musk of your wine was in the air.

What is your intention?

Friendship.

The Worm's Waking

2011-02-17T00:01:00.000-05:00

This is how a human being can change.

There is a worm

addicted to eating grape leaves.

Suddenly, he wakes up,

call it grace, whatever, something

wakes him, and he is no longer a worm.

He is the entire vineyard,

and the orchard too, the fruit, the trunks,

a growing wisdom and joy

that does not need to devour.

The Seed Market

2011-02-16T00:01:00.001-05:00

Can you find another market like this?

Where, with your one rose

you can buy hundreds of rose gardens?

Where, for one seed you get a whole wilderness?

For one weak breath, the divine wind?

You have been fearful of being absorbed

in the ground, or drawn up by the air.

Now your waterbead lets go

and drops into the ocean, where it came from.

This giving up is not a repenting.

It is a deep honoring of yourself.

When the ocean comes to you as a lover,

marry, at once, quickly for God's sake.

Don't postpone it. Existence has no better gift.

No amount of searching will find this.

A perfect falcon, for no reason,

has landed on your shoulder, and become yours.

Whoever's Calm and Sensible

2011-02-15T00:01:00.000-05:00

There is a light seed grain inside.

You fill it with yourself, or it dies.

I'm caught in this curling energy. Your hair.

Whoever's calm and sensible is insane.

Love's Confusing Joy

2011-02-14T00:01:00.011-05:00

If you want what visible reality

can give, you are an employee.

If you want the unseen world,

you are not living with your truth.

Both wishes are foolish,

but you'll be forgiven for forgetting

that what you really want is

love's confusing joy.

Happy Valentine's Day

Escaping to the Forest

2011-02-13T00:01:00.000-05:00

The Dream, by Henri Rousseau

Some souls have gotten free of their bodies.

Do you see them? Open your eyes for those

who escape to meet with other escapees,

whose hearts associate in a way they have

of leaving their false selves

to live in a truer self.

I don't mind if my companions

wander away for a while.

They will come back like a smiling drunk.

Thirsty ones die of their thirst.

A nightingale sometimes

flies from a garden

to sing in the forest.

Evolutionary Intelligence

2011-02-12T00:01:00.004-05:00

This groggy time we live, this is what it is like:

A man goes to sleep in the town

where he has always lived, and he dreams

he is living in another town.

He believes the reality of the dream town.

The world is that kind of sleep.

The dust of many crumbled cities

settles over us like a forgetful doze,

but we are older than those cities.

We began as a mineral. We emerged into plant life

and into the animal state. Then into being human,

and always we have forgotten our former states,

except in early spring when we almost

remember being green again.

Humankind is being led along an evolving course,

through this migration of intelligences,

and though we seem to be sleeping,

there is an inner wakefulness that directs the dream.

It will eventually startle us back

to the truth of who we are.

The Water You Want

2011-02-11T02:49:00.000-05:00

Someone may be clairvoyant, able to see

the future, and yet have very little wisdom.

Like the man who saw water in his dream,

and began leading everyone toward the mirage.

I am the one with heart-vision.

I have torn open the veil.

So they set out with him inside the dream,

while he is actually sleeping

beside a river of pure water.

Any search moves away from the spot

where the object of the quest is.

Sleep deeply wherever you are on the way.

Maybe some traveler will wake you.

Give up subtle thinking, the twofold, threefold

multiplication of mistakes.

Listen to the sound of waves within you.

You are dreaming your thirst,

when the water you want

is inside the big vein on your neck.

Water and the Moon

2011-02-10T00:01:00.000-05:00

There is a path from me to you

that I am constantly looking for

so I try to keep clear and still

as water does with the moon.

The One Thing You Must Do

2011-02-09T00:01:00.000-05:00

There is one thing in this world which you must never forget to do.

If you forget everything else and not this, there is nothing to worry

about, but if you remember everything else and forget this, then you

will have done nothing in your life.

It is as if a king has sent you to some country to do a task, and you

perform a hundred other services, but no the one he sent you to do.

So human beings come to this world to do particular work. That

work is the purpose, and each is specific to the person. If you don't

do it, it's as though a knife of the finest tempering were nailed into a

wall to hang things on. For a penny an iron nail could be bought to

serve for that.

Remember the deep root of your being, the presence of your lord.

Give your life to the one who already owns your breath and your

moments. If you don't, you will be like the one who takes a precious

dagger and hammers it into his kitchen wall for a peg to hold his

dipper gourd. You will be wasting valuable keenness and foolishly

ignoring your dignity and your purpose.

A Pilgrimage to a Person

2011-02-08T00:01:00.000-05:00

When you are not with close friends,

you are not in the presence.

It is sad to leave the people you travel with.

How much moreso those who remind you of God.

Hurry back to the ones protecting you.

On every trip, have only one objective,

to meet those who are friends

inside the presence.

If you stay home, keep the same purpose,

to meet the innermost presence

as it lives in people.

Be a pilgrim to the kaaba inside a human being,

and Mecca will rise into view on its own.

I Honor Those

2011-02-07T00:01:00.002-05:00

I honor those who try

to rid themselves of any lying,

who empty the self

and have only clear being there.

Unfold Your Own Myth

2011-02-06T00:01:00.001-05:00

Who gets up early to discover the moment light begins?

Who finds us here circling, bewildered, like atoms?

Who, like Jacob blind with grief and age,

smells the shirt of his lost son

and can see again?

Who lets a bucket down and brings up

a flowing prophet? Or like Moses goes for fire

and finds what burns inside the sunrise?

Jesus slips into a house to escape enemies,

and opens a door to the other world.

Solomon cuts open a fish, and there's a gold ring.

Omar storms in to kill the prophet

and leaves with blessings.

But don't be satisfied with stories, how things

have gone with others. Unfold

your own myth, so everyone will understand

the passage, We have opened you.

Start walking toward Shams. Your legs will get heavy

and tired. Then comes a moment of feeling

the wings you've grown, lifting.

Throat-Song

2011-02-05T00:01:00.003-05:00

The Nightingale, by Grace Ndirtu, 32-second video here

Let your throat-song

be clear and strong enough

to make an emperor fall full-length,

suppliant, at the door.

Someone Digging in the Ground

2011-02-04T00:01:00.001-05:00

May Picture, by Paul Klee

An eye is meant to see things.

The soul is here for its own joy.

A head has one use: for loving a true love.

Legs: to run after.

Love is for vanishing into the sky. The mind,

for learning what men have done and tried to do.

Mysteries are not to be solved. The eye goes blind

when it only wants to see why.

A lover is always accused of something.

But when he finds his love, whatever was lost

in the looking comes back completely changed.

On the way to Mecca, many dangers: thieves,

the blowing sand, only camel's milk to drink.

Still, each pilgrim kisses the black stone there

with pure longing, feeling in the surface

the taste of the lips he wants.

This talk is like stamping new coins. They pile up,

while the real work is being done outside

by someone digging in the ground.

The Freshness

2011-02-03T00:01:00.003-05:00

When it's cold and raining,

you are more beautiful.

And the snow brings me

even closer to your lips.

The inner secret, that which was never born,

you are that freshness, and I am with you now.

I can't explain the goings,

or the comings. You enter suddenly,

and I am nowhere again.

Inside the majesty.

Lightning

2011-02-02T00:01:00.007-05:00

Lovers Walking in the Snow (Crow and Heron)

Suzuki Harunobu (Japanese, 1725–1770)

This is no ordinary friendship.

I attend your banquet as wine attends.

Like lightning, I am an expert at dying.

Like lightning, this beauty has no language.

It makes no difference

whether I win or lose.

You sit with us in a congregation of the dead,

where one handful of dirt says,

I was once a head of hair.

Another, I was a backbone.

You say nothing.

Love comes in, I can deliver you

from yourself in this moment.

Now lover and beloved grow quiet.

My mouth is burning with sweetness.

As Much as a Pen Knows

2011-02-01T00:01:00.000-05:00

Do you think that 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.

Two Kinds of Intelligence

2011-01-31T00:01:00.000-05:00

There are two kinds of intelligence: one acquired,

as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts

from books and from what the teacher says,

collecting information from the traditional sciences

as well as from the new sciences.

With such intelligence you rise in the world.

You get ranked ahead or behind others

in regard to your competence in retaining

information. You stroll with this intelligence

in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always

more marks on your preserving tablets.

There is another kind of tablet, one

already completed and preserved inside you.

A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness

in the center of the chest. This other intelligence

does not turn yellow or stagnate. It's fluid,

and it does not move from outside to inside

through the conduits of plumbing-learning.

This second knowing is a fountainhead

from within you, moving out.

A Dumb Experiment

2011-01-30T00:01:00.002-05:00

Break open your personal self

to taste the story of the nutmeat soul.

These voices come from that rattling

against the outer shell.

The nut and the oil inside

have voices that can only be heard

with another kind of listening.

If it weren't for the sweetness of the nut,

the inner talking, who would ever shake a walnut?

We listen to words

so we can silently

reach into the other.

Let the ear and mouth get quiet,

so this taste can come to the lip.

Too long we have been saying poetry,

talking discourses, explaining the mystery outloud.

Let us try a dumb experiment.

Uthman's Silence

2011-01-29T00:01:00.000-05:00

The story is told of Uthman, who when he became caliph

mounted quickly the steps of Muhammad's pulpit,

where Abu Bakr, out of respect for the prophet,

seated himself on the second step.

There were three steps. Omar sat on the third step.

Uthman climbed to the top. When asked why, he replied,

If I sat on the third step, people would say

I was like Omar. If on the second step,

He's like Abu Bakr.

But up here where the chosen one sat, no one will think

to compare me with that king of the spirit.

And sometimes when he had climbed

to the preaching place, that sweet one Uthman,

would not say anything. He stayed silent

until midafternoon. No one asked him

for a sermon, and no one left the mosque.

In the silence many began to see with Uthman's light.

This is how a living master opens the inner eye.

The Many Wines

2011-01-28T04:02:00.000-05:00

Glowing Night, by Oscar Bluemner

God has given us a dark wine so potent

that, we leave the two worlds.

God made Majnun love Layla so much

that just her dog would cause confusion in him.

There are thousands of wines

that can take over our minds.

Don't think all ecstasies are the same.

Jesus was lost in his love for God.

His donkey was drunk with barley.

Every object, every being,

is a jar full of delight.

Be a connoisseur, and taste with caution.

Any wine will get you high.

Judge like a king, and choose the purest,

not the ones adulterated with fear,

or some urgency about "what's needed."

Drink the wine that moves you

as a camel moves when it's been untied,

and is just ambling about.

The Visions of Daquqi (4)

2011-01-27T00:01:00.004-05:00

Old Cities, Msyir Mohammed

One of the seven answers, Names, sometimes

the names slip away,

but it is not forgetfulness.

It is our being so absorbed.

Then they all say to me,

Would you lead us in prayer?

Yes. But wait awhile.

I am still in some temporal confusion

that will be solved by companionship with you.

Through companionship with the ground

a grapevine grows. It opens

into the earth's darkness and flies.

It becomes selfless in the presence

of its origin and learns what it really is.

They nod, as though to say, Whenever you are ready.

That nodding was a flame in my heart.

I was freed from hourly time,

from sequence and relation.

The Visions of Daquqi (3)

2011-01-26T00:01:00.002-05:00

Lanes, Ahmed Nussaif

The caravans had no food, yet food was dropping

all about them. If someone had said,

Look, over here, they would have thought him insane.

How can this happen. Am I dreaming?

I walk up to the trees. I eat the fruit.

I may as well believe.

Then the seven trees become one and then seven again.

At every second they are both one and seven.

Then they are seven men seated in meditation

for the sake of the one reality.

I come close and wave. They call,

O Daquqi, the glory and the crown.

How do they know my name?

They have never seen me until now.

Immediately they know my thought

and smile at each other.

Honored one, is this still hidden from you?

How can anything be hidden from one so dissolved in God?

I think inwardly, If this is the spirit-reality,

how is it we are speaking words and saying names?

The Visions of Daquqi (2)

2011-01-25T00:01:00.001-05:00

Kliem of the South, Ahmed Nussaif

What are those candles that no one seems to see?

In the presence of such lights

people were looking for lamps to buy.

Then the seven became one,

in the middle of the sky's rim.

Then that fanned out to seven again.

There were connections between candles

that cannot be said. I saw, but I cannot say.

They became seven men and then seven trees,

so dense with leaves and fruit no limbs were visible.

Flashes of light

spurted from each fruit like juice.

And most marvelous of all was that hundreds

of thousands of people were passing beside the trees,

risking their lives, sacrificing everything,

to find some scrap of shade. No one saw

the trees with their tremendous shade.

The Visions of Daquqi (1)

2011-01-24T00:01:00.002-05:00

Husam, tell about the visions of Daquqi,

who said, I have traveled east and west

not knowing which way I was going,

following the moon, lost inside God.

Someone asked, Why do you go barefooted

over the stones and thorns.

What, he answered. What.

A bewildered lover does not walk on feet.

He or she walks on love. There are no "long"

or "short" trips for those. No time.

The body learned from spirit how to travel.

A saint's body moves in the unconditioned way,

though it seems to be in conditionedness.

Daquqi said, One day I was going along

looking to see in people the shining of the Friend.

I came to the shore at twilight and saw

seven candles. I hurried along the beach

toward them. I was amazed. My amazement was amazed.

Waves of bewilderment broke over my head.

Farther and Farther from Zero

2011-01-23T00:01:00.003-05:00

Winged Figure, Abbott Handerson Thayer

Suddenly, I fall from the pavillion

into a place where I see the ugliness,

hypocrisy, rouge on a sunken face,

a thorn lodged in a kidney, the blind crone

holding a laurel wreath for the winner,

her black ribbons in shreds,

her eyes dark with purple,

a gold anklet on her shriveled leg.

The puppet show looks charming,

but go behind the screen and see who runs it.

Wash your hands and face of this charade.

Anyone who wants these prizes

flares up quickly like a wood chip.

There is one who can help,

who turns the wheel from nonexistence

to a sweet-breathing emptiness.

Words are ways we add up the breath,

counting stress and syllable

with our exacting musical knack

that takes us farther and farther from zero.

The Price of Kissing

2011-01-22T00:01:00.003-05:00

The Kiss, Gustav Klimt

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.

A Night Full of Talking

2011-01-21T00:01:00.000-05:00

Landscape, by Fred Williams Lysterfield

A night full of talking that hurts,

my worst held-back secrets. Everything

has to do with loving and not loving.

This night will pass.

Then we have work to do.

The Sunrise Ruby

2011-01-20T00:01:00.002-05:00

In the early morning hour,

just before dawn, lover and beloved awake

and take a drink of water.

She asks, Do you love me or yourself more?

Really, tell me the absolute truth.

He says, There is nothing left of me.

I am like a ruby held up to the sunrise.

Is it still a stone, or a world

made of redness? It has no resistance

to sunlight. The ruby and the sunrise are one.

Be courageous and discipline yourself.

Work. Keep digging your well.

Don't think about getting off from work.

Submit to a daily practice.

Your loyalty to that is a ring on the door.

Keep knocking, and the joy inside

will eventually open a window

and look out to see who's there.

Hallaj

2011-01-19T00:01:00.004-05:00

Into the Woods, Summer, by Howard Hodgkin

Metropolitan Museum of Art

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,

and it swamped over me from head to foot.

Years ago, I broke a bunch of roses

from the top of his wall. A thorn from that

is still in my palm, working deeper.

A person comes to him naked. It's cold.

There's a fur coat floating in the river.

Jump in and get it, he says.

You dive in. You reach for the coat.

It reaches for you.

It's a live bear that has fallen in upstream,

drifting with the current.

How long does it take? Hallaj yells from the bank.

Don't wait, you answer. This coat

has decided to wear me home.

A little part of a story, a hint.

Do you need long sermons on Hallaj?

The Old Woman and the Falcon

2011-01-18T00:01:00.000-05:00

Textile sample, designer unknown, Metropolitan Museum of Art

When you give a noble falcon

to a fussy old woman who knows nothing of falconry,

she will clip its wings short, for its own good.

Young man, where has your mother been

that your toenails have gotten this long?

Those talons are how the falcon hunts its food.

The old woman fixes him tutmaj, dumpling stew.

He won't touch it. Too good to eat my tutmaj, huh?

She ladles some broth and holds it to his beak.

Her anger builds, and suddenly she pours

the ladle of hot soup over his head.

Tears come from those beautiful falcon eyes.

He remembers his former life, the king's love-whistle,

the great circling over the ocean,

the distances that condense so quickly to a point.

Falcon tears are food for a true human being,

perfume for Gabriel.

Your soul is the king's falcon,

who says, This old woman's rage

does not touch my glory or my discipline.

Love Moves Away

2011-01-17T00:01:00.001-05:00

Pale sunlight,

pale the wall.

Love moves away.

The light changes.

I need more grace

than I thought.

Let the Beauty We Love

2011-01-16T00:01:00.000-05:00

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.

Bu'l-Hasan and the Snow

2011-01-15T00:01:00.002-05:00

After Bestami died, it happened as he said

that Bu'l-Hasan became the sheikh for his community.

Every day Bu'l-Hasan would go to Bestami's tomb

to receive instruction. He had been told to do this

in a dream by Bestami himself.

Every dawn he goes and stands

facing the tomb until midmorning.

Either the spirit of Bestami comes and talks to him

or in silence the questions he has are answered.

One day a deep snow has fallen overnight.

The graves are indistinguishable.

Bu'l-Hasan feels lost.

Then he hears his sheikh's voice.

The world is made of snow.

It falls and melts and falls again.

Do not be concerned with the snow.

Come toward the sound of my voice.

Move always in this direction.

From that day Bu'l-Hasan began to experience

the enlightened state

he had only heard and read about before.

The Mill

2011-01-14T00:01:00.001-05:00

Mill Dam in Traunstein, William Stanley Haseltine

The heart is a wheatgrain. We are the mill

where this body is a millstone

and thought, the moving river.

The body asks the river why it runs on so.

The river says, Ask the miller who made

the millrace that directs my falling

that turns your stone.

The miller says, You that love bread,

if this turning were not happening,

what would you dip in your broth?

So a lot of questioning goes on

around the milling of wheat,

but what really is this breadmaking work?

Now let silence ask about wheat and the river,

about the miller and the stone

and the taste of bread dipped in soup,

and this listening we do at the mill.

*The mill is one of Rumi's images for the process whereby individual grains get crushed to make something less separate, more communally useful (bread). Thought (the riverwater) and the body (the millstone) are part of this work, as are the miller (creative intelligence) and the customer (desire), who wants a piece of bread for his soup. (Note by Coleman Barks)

The Gift of Water

2011-01-13T00:01:00.000-05:00

Someone who does not know the Tigris River exists

brings the caliph who lives near the river

a jar of fresh water. The caliph accepts, thanks him,

and gives in return a jar filled with gold coins.

Since this man has come through the desert,

he should return by water. Taken out by another door,

the man steps into a waiting boat and sees

the wide freshwater of the Tigris. He bows his head,

What wonderful kindness that he took my gift.

Every object and being in the universe is a jar

overfilled with wisdom and beauty, a drop of the Tigris

that cannot be contained in any skin. Every jarful

spills and makes the earth more shining,

as though covered in satin.

If the man had seen even a tributary of the great river,

he would not have brought the innocence of his gift.

Those that stay and live by the Tigris grow so ecstatic

that they throw rocks at the jugs, and the jugs

become perfect. They shatter. The pieces dance,

and water . . . . Do you see?

Neither jar nor water nor stone, nothing.

You knock at the door of reality, shake

your thought-wings, loosen your shoulders, and open.

The Night Ocean

2011-01-12T00:01:00.000-05:00

Study of the Head & Shoulders, etc., by Jan Lievens

We are the night ocean filled

with glints of light. We are the space

between the fish and the moon,

while we sit here together.

Backpain

2011-01-11T00:01:00.002-05:00

Muhammad went to visit a sick friend.

Such kindness brings more kindness,

and there is no knowing the proliferation from there.

The man was about to die.

Muhammad put his face close and kissed him.

His friend began to revive.

Muhammad's visit re-created him.

He began to feel grateful for an illness

that brought such light.

And also for the backpain

that wakes him in the night.

No need to snore away like a buffalo

when this wonder is walking the world.

There are values in pain that are difficult

to see without the presence of a guest.

Don't complain about autumn.

Walk with grief like a good friend.

Listen to what he says.

Sometimes the cold and dark of a cave

give the opening we most want.

A Piece of Wood

2011-01-10T03:27:00.000-05:00

I reach for a piece of wood. It turns into a lute.

I do some meanness. It turns out helpful.

I say one must not travel during the holy month.

then I start out, and wonderful things happen.

Gnats Inside the Wind

2011-01-09T00:01:00.005-05:00

Equivalent, by Alfred Stieglitz

Some gnats come from the grass to speak with Solomon.

O Solomon, you are the champion of the oppressed.

You give justice to the little guys, and they don't get

any littler than us. We are tiny metaphors

for frailty. Can you defend us?

Who has mistreated you?

Our complaint is against the wind.

Well, says Solomon, you have pretty voices,

you gnats, but remember, a judge cannot listen

to just one side. I must hear both litigants.

Of course, agree the gnats.

Summon the East Wind, calls out Solomon,

and the wind arrives almost immediately.

What happened to the gnat plaintiffs? gone.

Such is the way of every seeker who comes to complain

at the High Court. When the presence of God arrives,

where are the seekers? First there's dying,

then union, like gnats inside the wind.

There is Something in Us

2011-01-08T00:01:00.003-05:00

Imagine a man selling his donkey

to be with Jesus.

Now imagine him selling Jesus

to get a ride on a donkey.

This does happen.

Jesus can transform a drunk into gold.

If the drunk is already golden,

he can be changed into pure diamond.

If already that, he can become the circling

planets, Jupiter, Venus, the moon.

Never think that you are worthless.

God has paid an enormous amount for you,

and the gifts keep arriving.

There is something in us

that has nothing to do with night and day,

grapes that never saw a vineyard.

WE ARE ALL RETURNING

says the Qur'an. Enjoy Shams,

or if you cannot do that, at least

consider what honest people tell you.

Don't Let Your Throat Tighten

2011-01-07T00:01:00.002-05:00

Ocean Swells, by Arthur B. Davies

Don't let your throat tighten

with fear. Take sips of breath

all day and night, before death

closes your mouth.

Sometimes I Do

2011-01-06T00:01:00.001-05:00

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 light becomes this art.

Birdwings

2011-01-05T00:01:00.000-05:00

Your grief for what you've lost lifts a mirror

up to where you're bravely working.

Expecting the worst, you look, and instead,

here's the joyful face you've been wanting to see.

Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.

If it were always a fist or always stretched open,

you would be paralyzed.

Your deepest presence

is in every small contracting and expanding,

the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated

as birdwings.

The Elegance of the Ermine

2011-01-04T00:01:00.002-05:00

Midnight, and a messenger comes from a prayer niche,

someone as quiet as moonlight,

yet with a torch that burns our sleeping.

A king knocks on the doorkeeper's door

and laughing, leads everyone out to a table.

Our lips tremble at the cup, with the same trembling

as a drop of mercury.

The gentleness of the host is the same

as that that made the elegance of the ermine.

The dry and wet of a love affair,

those tears are identical to the taking in

and giving away of a waterwheel's turning.

The keys that open all gates

are strapped to love's chest.

When a bird is completely broken and still,

it gets removed from the snare.

This list of rude likenesses

does not come near saying

what happens in our lives.

Children Running Through

2011-01-03T00:01:00.000-05:00

Bacchante and Infant Faun, by Frederick William MacMonnies

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.

A Single Brushstroke Down

2011-01-02T00:01:00.000-05:00

Light dawns, and any talk of proof

resembles a blind man's cane at sunrise.

Remember the passage,

We are with you wherever you are.

Come back to that.

When did we ever leave it?

No matter we're in a prison of forgetting

or enjoying the banquet of wisdom,

we are always inside presence.

Drunkenly asleep, tenderly awake,

clouded with grief, laughing like lightning,

angry at war, quiet with gratitude, we are nothing

in this many-mooded world of weather

but a single brushstroke down,

speaking of presence.

*The word Allah in Arabic begins with a strong downward mark.

A Just-Finishing Candle

2011-01-01T00:01:00.001-05:00

Study Head of a Woman, by Jean Baptiste Greuze

A candle is made to become entirely flame.

In that annihilating moment

it has no shadow.

It is nothing but a tongue of light

describing a refuge.

Look at this

just-finishing candle stub

as someone who is finally safe

from virtue and vice,

the pride and the shame

we claim from those.

Say Who I Am (2)

2010-12-31T00:01:00.000-05:00

The musical air coming through a flute,

a spark off a stone, a flickering in metal.

Both candle,

and the moth crazy around it.

Rose, and the nightingale

lost in the fragrance.

I am all orders of being, the circling galaxy,

the evolutionary intelligence,

the lift and the falling away.

What is and what isn't.

You who know Jelaluddin,

you the one in all,

say who I am.

Say I am you.

Say Who I Am (1)

2010-12-30T00:01:00.001-05:00

I am dust particles in sunlight.

I am the round sun.

To the bits of dust I say, Stay.

To the sun, Keep moving.

I am morning mist,

and the breathing of evening.

I am wind in the top of a grove,

and surf on the cliff.

Mast, rudder, helmsman, and keel,

I am also the coral reef they founder on.

I am a tree with a trained parrot in its branches.

Silence, thought, and voice.

God in the Stew

2010-12-29T00:01:00.000-05:00

Is there a human mouth

that does not give out soul-sound?

Is there love, a drawing-together

of any kind, that is not sacred?

Every natural dog

sniffs God in the stew.

Look inside your mind.

Do you hear the crowd gathering?

Help coming, every second.

Still you cover your eyes with mud.

Wash your face.

Anyone who steps into an orchard,

walks inside the orchard keeper.

Millions of love-tents bloom on the plain.

A star in your chest says,

None of this is outside you.

Close your lips and let the maker of mouths

talk, the one who says, things.

One Transparent Sky

2010-12-28T00:01:00.000-05:00

Lovers think they are looking for each other,

but there is only one search.

Wandering this world is wandering that,

both inside one transparent sky.

In here there is no dogma and no heresy.

The miracle of Jesus is himself,

not what he said or did about the future.

Forget the future. I would worship someone

who could do that.

On the way you may want to look back, or not,

but if you can say, There is nothing ahead,

there will be nothing there.

Stretch your arms and take hold

the cloth of your clothes with both hands.

The cure for pain is in the pain.

Good and bad are mixed. If you don't have both,

you do not belong with us.

When someone gets lost, is not here,

he must be inside us. There is no place like that

anywhere in the world.

A Subtle Truth

2010-12-27T00:01:00.000-05:00

If you want money more than anything,

you will be bought and sold.

If you have a greed for food,

you will become a loaf of bread.

This is a subtle truth.

Whatever you love, you are.

Your True Life

2010-12-26T00:01:00.000-05:00

As you start to walk out on the way,

the way appears.

As you cease to be,

true life begins.

As you grow smaller,

this world cannot contain you.

You will be shown a being

that has no you in it.

The Population of the World

2010-12-25T00:01:00.006-05:00

Mark Rothko, Untitled

Christ is the population of the world,

and every object as well. There is no room

for hypocrisy. Why use bitter soup for healing,

when sweet water is everywhere?

Soul, Heart, and Body One Morning

2010-12-24T00:01:00.000-05:00

There is 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 to dance. At that moment

soul reaches total emptiness.

Your heart becomes Mary, miraculously pregnant,

and body, like a two-day-old Jesus,

says wisdom words.

Now the heart turns to light,

and the body picks up the tempo.

Where Shams Tabriz walks, the footprints

are musical notes, and holes

you fall through into space.

Cry Easily

2010-12-23T00:01:00.000-05:00

Keep your intelligence white-hot

and your grief glistening,

so your life will stay fresh.

Cry easily like a little child.

What Jesus Runs From

2010-12-22T00:01:00.000-05:00

The son of Mary, Jesus, hurries up a slope

as though a wild animal were chasing him.

Someone following him asks, Where are you going?

No one is after you. Are you the one

who says words over a dead person, so that

he wakes up? I am. Who then could possibly

cause you to run like this? Jesus explains.

I say the Great Name over the deaf and the blind,

they are healed. Over a stony mountainside

and it tears its mantle down to the navel.

But when I speak lovingly for hours with those

who take human warmth and mock it, when I say the Name

to them, nothing happens. They remain rock,

or turn to sand. Other diseases are ways for mercy

to enter, but this nonresponding breeds violence

and coldness toward God. I am fleeing from that. As

little by little air steals water, so praise

dries up and evaporates with foolish people who refuse to

change. Like cold stone you sit on, a cynic steals

body heat. He does not feel the sun. Jesus was not running

from anything. He was teaching in a new way.

A Star with No Name

2010-12-21T00:01:00.000-05:00

When a baby is taken from the wet nurse,

it easily forgets her and starts eating solid food.

Seeds feed awhile on the ground,

then lift up into the sun.

So you should taste filtered light

and work toward that which has no personal covering.

That's how you came here, like a star with no name.

Move in the night sky with those anonymous lights.

Tattooing in Qazwin (2)

2010-12-20T00:01:00.001-05:00

LeBron James with chest tattoo of a lion;

was he wailing from tattoo pain?

Photo found here.

The ear.

Doc, let's do a lion with no ears this time.

The barber shakes his head and once more

the needle and once more, the wailing.

Where are you now?

The belly.

I like a lion without a belly.

The master lion-maker stands for a long time

with his fingers in his mouth.

Finally, he throws the needle down.

No one has ever asked me to do such a thing.

To create a lion without a tail or a head or a stomach.

God himself could not do it.

Brother, stand the pain. Escape the poison

of your impulses. The sky will bow to your beauty

if you do. Learn to light the candle. Rise

with the sun. That way a thorn expands to a rose.

A particular glows with the universal.

What is it to praise? Make yourself particles.

What is it to know something of God?

Burn inside that presence. Burn up.

Tattooing in Qazwin (1)

2010-12-19T00:01:00.000-05:00

In Qazwin they have a custom of tattooing themselves

for good luck, with a blue ink,

on the back of the hand, the shoulder, whatever.

A certain man there goes to his barber

and asks to be given a powerful, heroic blue lion

on his shoulder blade.

And do it with flair. I have Leo Ascending.

I want plenty of blue.

But as soon as the needle starts pricking,

he howls, What are you doing?

The lion.

Which part did you start with?

I began with the tail.

Leave out the tail. That lion's rump

is in a bad place for me. It cuts off my wind.

The barber continues and immediately

the man yells out, Ooooooooooooo, which part now?

What is Love? Gratitude

2010-12-18T00:01:00.001-05:00

Don't unstring your bow.

I am your four-feathered arrow

that has not been used yet.

I am a strong knifeblade word,

not some if or maybe, dissolving in air.

I am sunlight slicing the dark.

Who made this night?

A forge deep in the earth-mud.

What is the body?

Endurance.

What is love?

Gratitude.

What is hidden in our chests?

Laughter.

What else?

Compassion.

Don't ask what love can make or do.

Look at the colors of the world.

The riverwater moving in all rivers at once.

A Mouse and a Frog (2)

2010-12-17T00:01:00.004-05:00

Illustration for an Aesop's fable found here

But one day the mouse complains, There are times

when I want sohbet, and you're out in the water,

jumping around where you can't hear me.

We meet at this appointed time,

but the text says, Lovers pray constantly.

Once a day, once a week, five times an hour,

is not enough. Fish like we are

need the ocean around us.

Do camel bells say, Let's meet back here Thursday night?

Ridiculous. They jingle

together continuously,

talking while the camel walks.

Do you pay regular visits to yourself?

Don't argue or answer rationally.

Let us die,

and dying, reply.

*This is the night Rumi died, in 1273.

A Mouse and a Frog (1)

2010-12-16T00:01:00.003-05:00

Photo of frog rescuing a mouse found here;

it was shot in the flood waters of a 2006 Indian moonsoon

A mouse and a frog meet every morning on the riverbank.

They sit in a nook of the ground and talk.

Each morning, the second they see each other,

they open easily, telling stories and dreams and secrets,

empty of any fear or suspicious holding-back.

To watch and listen to those two

is to understand how, as it is written,

sometimes when two beings come together,

Christ becomes visible.

The mouse starts laughing out a story he hasn't thought of

in five years, and the telling might take five years.

There is no blocking the speechflow-river-running-

all-carrying momentum that true intimacy is.

Bitterness doesn't have a chance with those two.

The God-messenger Khidr touches a roasted fish.

It leaps off the grill back into the water.

Friend sits by Friend, and the tablets appear.

They read the mysteries off each other's foreheads.

Wean Yourself

2010-12-15T00:01:00.000-05:00

Little by little, wean yourself.

This is the gist of what I have to say.

From an embryo, whose nourishment comes in blood,

move to an infant drinking milk,

to a child on solid food,

to a searcher after wisdom,

to a hunter of more invisible game.

Think how it is to have a conversation with an embryo.

You might say, The world outside is vast and intricate.

There are wheatfields and mountain passes

and orchards in bloom.

At night there are millions of galaxies, and in sunlight

the beauty of friends dancing at a wedding.

You ask the embryo why he or she stays cooped up

in the dark with its eyes closed.

Listen to the answer.

There is no "other world."

I only know what I have experienced.

You must be hallucinating.

The Nightwatchman (2)

2010-12-14T00:01:00.000-05:00

Night Shadows, by Edward Hopper

The nightwatchman knows the way

from body to soul, how soul moves

in stomach bile, in blood and semen, in saliva.

Soul works inside those fluids

to keep the body fresh and full of energy.

So the stars and the planets and this world

are moving to bring grace here

through the cold night-clarity.

Events like battle arrows crisscross

from every direction. There is only one archer.

The skill of the sheepdog comes from the shepherd.

A city has a collective intelligence,

and each person there has a unique knowing.

Sometimes random bits pretend

to be a caravan, but it was a good messenger

who brought us the order out on the road

to Come back, Come back.

The Nightwatchman (1)

2010-12-13T00:01:00.000-05:00

Nighthawks, by Edward Hopper

I sit by the side of one who watches

like the stars at night without sleeping watch.

My friend sits on the roof at night.

I attend that watching.

During the day I help with the gardening.

He is both a tender of flowers

and flowering trees.

It is no shame to be in this friendship,

or if it is, it is.

I was on my way elsewhere

when I saw the nightwatchman

sitting on the sky's roof like a guard.

Like a king, like a gardener in his garden,

rainwet stones, like the body's hand-me-down.

A Dying Dog

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A Woman Bathing, Rembrandt van Rijn

A dog is dying on the road.

A man is weeping beside him. A beggar comes by.

Why the tears? This dog hunted game for me.

He kept watch at night.

Many times he drove away thieves.

What's wrong? Hunger has weakened him.

What's in the bag? Your food sack looks full.

Those are leftovers from last night.

I'll eat them later.

Give a little to the dog.

I give him these tears instead.

They are easier to come by.

Food on the road costs hard-earned money.

The beggar curses the man and leaves.

The beggar is right. The man's values are reversed.

Tears are worth more than money.

Tears are blood distilled into water.

Pay attention to those who want to change

so badly that they cry and dissolve

into lovingkindness and freedom.

One Swaying Being

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Love is not condescending, never that,

nor books, nor any marking on paper,

nor what people say of each other.

Love is a tree

with branches reaching into eternity

and roots set deep in eternity,

and no trunk.

Have you seen it? The mind cannot.

Your desiring cannot.

The longing you feel for this love

comes from inside you.

When you become the Friend,

your longing will be as the man in the ocean

who holds to a piece of wood.

Eventually, wood, man, and ocean

become one swaying being,

Shams Tabriz, the secret of God.

Majesty and Helplessness

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Torn wall covering, found here

Always check your inner state

with the lord of your heart.

Copper does not know it's copper,

until it is changing into gold.

Your loving does not know its majesty,

until it knows its helplessness.

Descend into the Pith

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Would you like to have revealed to you

the truth of the Friend?

Leave the rind,

and descend into the pith.

Fold within fold, the beloved

drowns in his own being. This world

is drenched with that drowning.

A Voice through the Door

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Sometimes you hear a voice through the door

calling you, as fish out of water

hear the waves, or a hunting falcon

hears the drum's Come back. Come back.

This turning toward what you deeply love

saves you. Read the book of your life,

which has been given you.

A voice comes to your soul saying,

Lift your foot. Cross over.

Move into emptiness

of question and answer and question.

Listening (2)

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Lisa Trehot, by Auguste Renoir

Listen, and feel the beauty of your separation,

the unsayable absence.

There is a moon inside every human being.

Learn to be companions with it.

Give more of your life to this listening.

As brightness is to time,

so you are to the one who talks

to the deep ear in your chest.

I should sell my tongue and buy a thousand ears

when that one steps near and begins to speak.

Listening (1)

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What is the deep listening?

Sama is a greeting from the secret ones

inside the heart, a letter.

The branches of your intelligence

grow new leaves in the wind of this listening.

The body reaches a peace.

Rooster sound comes,

reminding you of your love for dawn.

The reed flute and the singer's lips.

The knack of how spirit breathes into us

becomes as simple and ordinary

as eating and drinking.

The dead rise with the pleasure of listening.

If someone cannot hear a trumpet melody,

sprinkle dirt on him and declare him dead.

Your Face

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You may be planning departure,

as a human soul leaves the world

taking almost all its sweetness with it.

You saddle your horse. You must be going.

Remember that you have friends here

as faithful as the grass and the sky.

Have I failed you? Possibly you are angry.

But remember our nights of conversation,

the well work, yellow roses by the ocean,

the longing, the archangel Gabriel

saying, So be it.

Shams Tabriz, your face

is what every religion tries to remember.

Jars of Springwater

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Jars of springwater are not enough anymore.

Take us down to the river.

The face of peace, the sun itself.

No more the slippery, cloudlike moon.

Give us one clear morning after another,

and the one whose work remains unfinished,

who is our work as we diminish,

idle, though occupied, empty, and open.

A General Introductory Lecture

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A nightingale flies nearer the roses.

A girl blushes. Pomegranates ripen.

Hallaj will be executed.

A man walks a mountain path, solitary

and full of prayer.

Narcissus at the edge, creekwater washing

tree roots. God is giving

a general introductory lecture.

We hear and read it everywhere,

in the field, through the branches.

We will never finish studying.

Neither of us has a penny,

yet we are walking the jeweler's bazaar

seriously considering making a purchase.

Or shall I say this with other metaphors?

A barn crowded with souls.

Quietness served around a table.

Two people talk along a road

that's paved with words.

The Sweet Taste of Grief

2010-12-02T00:01:00.001-05:00

I saw grief drinking a cup of sorrow

and called out,

It tastes sweet, does it not?

You have caught me, grief answered,

and you have ruined my business.

How can I sell sorrow,

when you know it's a blessing?