Spring is Christ

Everyone has eaten and fallen asleep.

The house is empty.

We walk out to the garden to let the apple

meet the peach, to carry messages

between rose and jasmine.

Spring is Christ,

raising martyred plants from their shrouds.

A leaf trembles. I tremble

in the wind-beauty like silk from Turkestan.

The censer fans into flame.

This wind is the Holy Spirit.

The trees are Mary.

Watch how husband and wife play subtle games

with their hands. Strings of cloudy pearls

are thrown across the lovers,

as is the marriage custom.

We talk about this and that. There is no rest

except on these branching moments.

The Waterwheel

Stay together, friends.

Don't scatter and sleep.

Our friendship is made

of being awake.

The waterwheel accepts water

and turns and gives it away,

weeping.

That way it stays in the garden,

whereas another roundness

rolls through a dry riverbed looking

for what it thinks it wants.

Stay here, quivering with each moment

like a drop of mercury.

Dissolver of Sugar

Dissolver of sugar, dissolve me,

if this is the time.

Do it gently with a touch of a hand, or a look.

Every morning I wait at dawn. That's when

it has happened before. Or do it suddenly

like an execution. How else 

can I get ready for death?

You breathe without a body, like a spark.

You grieve, and I begin to feel lighter.

You keep me away with your arm,

but the keeping away is pulling me in.

Wax

When I see you and how you are,

I close my eyes to the other.

For your Solomon's seal I become wax

throughout my body. I wait to be light.

I give up opinions on all matters.

I become the reed flute for your breath.

You were inside my hand.

I kept reaching around for something.

I was inside your hand, but I kept asking questions

of those who know very little.

I must have been incredibly simple or drunk or insane

to sneak into my own house and steal money,

to climb over my own fence and take my own vegetables.

But no more. I have gotten free of that ignorant fist

that was pinching and twisting my secret self.

The universe and the light of the stars come through me.

I am the crescent moon put up

over the gate to the festival.

Morning Water and a Poet

We learn this from a drunken king,

who wakes up hungover and sick,

asking for two things, a morning drink of water,

and Let it be brought by a poet.

There is a tradition that the wine

of nonexistence makes us God-drunk.

Intoxicated that way, we are purified.

There is a kind of poet

whose poetry pours that wine,

and there is another poet who makes us want

the red wine and the white.

The two poets may even have the same name.

Look inside form. Read with your soul

this Masnavi. Let it bring you

morning water and a poet.

Humble Living

Humble living does not diminish. It fills.

Going back to a simpler self gives wisdom.

When a man makes up a story for his child,

he becomes a father and a child

 together, listening.

A Poem in a Letter

Before death takes away what you are given,

give away what is there to give.

No dead person grieves for his death. He mourns only what

he didn't do. Why did I wait? Why did I not . . . ? Why did I

neglect to . . . ?

I cannot think of better advice to send. I hope you like it.

May you stay in your infinity.

Peace.

"One hundred and forty-seven of Rumi's letters survive. Many of them contain lines of poetry composed while writing the letters."