The Face

So the frowning teacher came and left.

He is very consistent with that vinegar face.

But maybe he shows that to us and smiles with others.

Such a beautiful teacher, but so sour.

He is a pure standard for tartness.

Consider how your face is a source of light.

If you enter a grieving room

with the Friend in your eyes,

light will bloom there

according to the laws of sweet and sour.

Locked in a cell, you grow bitter, but out walking

in morning sunlight with friends,

how does that taste?

There are exceptions. Joseph caught the rose

fragrance down in his abandoned wellhole.

In this quietness now

I feel someone seated on my right

like a kindness that will never leave.

Fasting

There is a hidden sweetness in the stomach's emptiness.

We are lutes, no more, no less. If the soundbox

is stuffed full of anything, no music comes.

But if brain and belly are burning clean

with fasting, every moment a new song

comes out of the fire.

The fog clears and new energy

makes you run up the steps in front of you.

Be emptier, and cry like reed instruments cry.

Emptier, write secrets with the reed pen.

When you are full of food and drink, an ugly metal

status sits where your spirit should. When you fast,

good habits gather like friends who want to help.

Fasting is Solomon's ring. Don't give it

to some illusion and lose your power, but even if you have,

if you have lost all will and control,

they come back when you fast, like soldiers, appearing

out of the ground, pennants flying above them.

A table descends to your tents, Jesus' table.

Expect to see it when you fast, this table spread

with other food, better than the broth of cabbages.

Sky-Circles

The way of love is not

a subtle argument.

The door there

is devastation.

Birds make great sky-circles

of their freedom.

How do they learn that?

They fall, and falling,

they are given wings.

Mirror and Face

Young Woman with a Water Pitcher, Johannes Vermeer

We are the mirror as well as the face in it.

We are tasting the taste this minute

of eternity. We are pain

and what cures pain, both.

We are the sweet cold water

and the jar that pours.

Betrayal into Trust

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.

The image above was taken at a Rumi reading

in November 2007, by Coleman Barks,

who is seated just to the left of the dervishes.

Neither This nor That

I may be clapping my hands,

but I do not belong to a crowd of clappers.

I am neither this nor that. I am not part of a group

that loves flute music, or one that loves gambling,

or one that loves drinking wine.

Those who live in time, descended from Adam,

made of earth and water, I am not part of that.

Do not listen to what I say as though these words

came from an inside and went to an outside.

Your faces are very beautiful, but they are wooden cages.

You had better run from me. My words are fire.

I have nothing to do with being famous,

or with making grand judgments or feeling shame.

I borrow nothing. I do not want anything

from anybody. I flow through all human beings.

Love is my only companion.

When union happens, my speech goes inward,

toward Shams. At that meeting

the secrets of language are no longer secret.

It's Afternoon

 Speak quietly

and say nothing that is not true.

It's afternoon. We need to be quiet

for a while. Speaking would be

such an orchard to walk in,

if we could do it without alphabet and sounds.

These stories and images and conversations

through which we try to show the inner life,

Husam and I,

they are like a donkey's head

that we carry from the skinning pit

to the kitchen. Let further changes come.

I give word-shape to this poetry.

Husam supplies the essence.

No, that's wrong. Both come from Husam,

Ziya-Haqq, the sun that is one

with earth and sky, one with intention and heart.

Husam, when my spirit completely recognizes yours,

they recall our being one.