Rumi, The Big Red Book, page 25
Rain makes every molecule pregnant with a mystery.
We groan with women in labor.
The ground cries out, I am truth and Glory is here,
breaks open, and a camel is born out of it.
A branch falls from a tree, and there is a snake.
Muhammad said: A faithful believer is a good camel,
always looking to its Master, who takes perfect care.
He brands the flank. He sets out hay.
He binds the knees with reasonable rules,
and now he loosens all bindings and lets his camel dance,
tearing the bridle and ripping the blankets.
The field itself sprouts new forms,
while the camel dances over them,
imaginary plants no one has thought of,
but all these new seeds, no matter how they try,
do not reveal the other sun.
Still the effort is joy,
one by one to keep uncovering pearls in oyster shells.
Chapter 21
Ar-Rahman, The Kind
The current Dalai Lama says, “Kindness is my religion.” There are no separating distances. Kitchen smoke drifts up into clouds, cumin seeds browning. I am inside all of this as a continuous question about soul. In this new health we become servants to one another, a mother’s hand held out for her hurt child. We drink in this place with our breathing, and the nightbirds start singing. How else should we get ready for death? Just to be held by the ocean is the best luck we could have, in this tenderness of buoyancy.
AS LAKEWATER RISES INTO MIST
The singer sings about love,
until the friend appears in the doorway.
Kitchen smoke drifts up into clouds
and becomes a thousand-year-old wine.
I am here, not reckoning the credit accumulated
or future speculation. I am the vineyard
and the barrel where the grapes are crushed.
The entire operation, whose transaction pours
this glass of wine, this moment, this poem.
A man stumbles by with baggage,
papers from the house, regret and wishing,
not knowing which to tend to. Neither.
After you see the face, concerns change,
as lakewater rises into mist.
A SMILE AND A GENTLENESS
There is a smile and a gentleness inside.
When I learned the name and address of that,
I went to where you sell perfume.
I begged you not to trouble me so with longing.
Come out and play. Flirt more naturally.
Teach me how to kiss.
On the ground a spread blanket,
flame that’s caught and burning well,
cumin seeds browning.
I am inside all this with my soul.
NEW BLOSSOMS
Sit near someone who has had the experience.
Sit under a tree with new blossoms.
Walking the section of the market where chemists sell essences,
you will receive conflicting advice.
Go toward kindness. If you are not sure
where that is, you will be drawn in by fakes.
They will take your money and sit you down
on their doorstep saying, I’ll be right back.
But they have another door they leave by.
Do not dip your cup in a pot
just because it has reached the simmering point.
Not every reed is sugarcane.
Not every under has an over.
Not every eye can see.
Or it may be that you cannot thread the needle
because it already has thread in it.
Your loving alertness is a lantern.
Keep it protected from wind that makes it crazy.
Instead of that airy commotion
live in the water that gently cools as it flows.
Be a helpful friend,
and you will become a green tree
with always new fruit,
with always deeper journeys into love.
THE TALKING
I have come here to lay my head at your feet,
to ask forgiveness,
to sit in the rose chair and burn my thorns.
Whatever I thought to do,
when I am here with you, is nothing.
I come to weep.
There is no escape from grief.
Outwardly, I am silent.
Inwardly, you know how I am screaming.
Make my face yours.
I will shorten this poem.
Read the rest inside me.
Poor silent lover,
you have no one to talk to?
But your thoughts keep surging through
like an army of firebrands.
Alone, every person stays quiet.
No one talks to a closed door.
But you are convinced
that you have lost your best companion.
Maybe you are already in the pure world,
beyond this scroungy wanting
and the metabolizing of nature. No doubt.
GREEN WRIT
From behind a thin cloth
a blaze of straw pretends to be the moon.
There are those who destroy soul growth
by using sacred symbols in their talk.
When you fall in love with clothing,
it is like you ride a donkey
into deep mud and sit there.
Even a dog sniffs greasy bread before eating.
Have you ever seen lions fighting over a piece of bread?
Why are you drawn to a beautiful corpse?
You are a continuous question about soul.
When the answer comes in, the question changes,
the way a kindness in grape juice turns it to wine,
the way you were born into this life.
Fire lightens and rises.
You bow when you hear truth.
Fall thieves the garden barren.
Then a spring justice knocks on the door.
You read the green writ removing all restraint.
SALADIN’S LEAVING
You decide to leave and once more darken into iron.
You bring to this place rose and lily and eglantine.
Let no one ever say you work for the adversary.
You brighten where you are.
You hold us together.
Now you lay on your side
in the laughing love-play we have had.
You honor this dance with gold-scattering sleeves, Saladin.
Like the moon you turn a grain-field silver.
FEET BECOMING HEAD
The sun came up differently today.
Souls move in the changing light.
Jupiter, the moon, the good luck house we inhabit,
the friend, all one presence today,
this grand health where we are servants to each other.
One who pours wine and makes toasts
arrives at the banquet just as it is over.
It is the perfect beginning for ending,
as feet become head in this new way.
BOTH WINGS BROKEN
Love draws a dagger and pulls me close.
Lock and key. Bird with both wings broken.
The love religion is all that is written here.
Who else would say this?
You open me wide open, or you tie me tighter.
The ball waits on the field to be hit again.
You push me into fire like Abraham.
You pull me out like Muhammad.
Which do you like better? you ask.
All the same, if it is your hand, troubles or peace.
Friends become enemies, faithless faithful.
Some knots tighten, some loosen.
Unruly tangle of caution and rebellion,
ropes and uncombed hair, no one can tell.
Then comes the sure attention
of a mother’s hand for her hurt child.
BLESSING THE MARRIAGE
This marriage be wine with halvah,
honey dissolving in milk.
This marriage be the leaves and fruit of a date tree.
This marriage be women laughing together for days on end.
This marriage, a sign for us to study.
This marriage, beauty.
This marriage, a moon in a light blue sky.
This marriage, this silence fully mixed with spirit.
WAKE AND WALK OUT
If I flinched at every grief, I would be an intelligent idiot.
If I were not the sun, I would ebb and flow with sadness.
If you were not my guide, I would wander lost in Sinai.
If there were no light,
I would keep opening and closing the door.
If there were no rose garden,
where would the morning breezes go?
If love did not want music and laughter and poetry,
what would I say?
If you were not medicine, I would look sick and skinny.
If there were no leafy limbs in the air,
there would be no wet roots.
If no gifts were given, I would grow arrogant and cruel.
If there were no way into God,
I would not have lain in the grave of this body so long.
If there were no way from right to left,
I could not be swaying with the grasses.
If there were no grace and no kindness,
conversation would be useless, and nothing we do would matter.
Listen to the new stories that begin every day.
If light were not beginning again in the east,
I would not now wake and walk out inside this dawn.
AUCTION
As elephants remember India perfectly,
as mind dissolves, as song begins, as the glass fills,
wind rising, a roomful of conversation,
a sanctuary of prostration,
a bird lights on my hand in this day born of friends,
this ocean covering everything, all roads opening,
a person changing to kindness,
no one reasonable, religious jargon forgotten,
and Saladin there raising his hand
to bid on the bedraggled boy Joseph.
SCATTERBRAIN SWEETNESS
There is a glory that breathes life back into a corpse
and brings strangers together as friends.
Call that one back who fills the held-out robe
of a thornbush with flowers, who clears muddied minds,
who gives a two-day-old infant wisdom
beyond anyone’s learning. What baby? you ask.
There is a fountain, a passion circulating.
I am not saying this well because I am too much
in the scatterbrain sweetness. Listen anyway.
It must be said. There are eyes that see into eternity.
A presence beyond the power and magic of shamans.
Let that in. Sink to the floor, full prostration.
ONE WHO CAN QUIT SEEING HIMSELF
I look for one simple and open enough to see the friend,
not an intelligence weighing several perspectives.
I want an empty shell to hold this pearl,
not a stone who pretends to have a secret center,
when the surface goes all the way through.
I want one who can quit seeing himself, fill with God,
and instead of being irritated by interruption
and daily resentments, feel those as kindness.
TALKING IN THE NIGHT
In the middle of the night I cry out,
Who lives in this love I have?
You say, I do, but I am not here alone.
Who are these other images with me?
I say, They are reflections of you,
just as the beautiful inhabitants of Chigil in Turkestan
resemble each other.
You say, But who is this other living being?
That is my wounded soul.
Then I brought that soul before you as a prisoner.
This one is dangerous, I say.
Do not let him off easy.
You wink and give me one end of a delicate thread.
Pull it tight, but do not break it.
I reach my hand to touch you.
You strike it down.
Why are you so harsh with me?
For good reason.
But certainly not to keep you away.
Whoever enters this place saying, Here I am
must be stopped.
This is not a pen for sheep.
There are no separating distances here.
This is love’s sanctuary.
Saladin is how the soul looks.
Rub your eyes, and look again with love at love.
MAYBE THEY ARE SHY
Now the nightbirds will be singing
of the way we love each other.
Why should they sing about flowers
when they have seen us in the garden?
Maybe they are shy.
They cannot look at the face,
so they describe the feet.
If they keep dividing love into pieces,
they will disappear altogether.
We must be gentle and explain it to them.
Think of a mountain so huge
the Caucasus Range is a tiny speck.
Normal mountains run toward her when she calls.
They listen in their cave-ears and echo back.
They turn upsidedown when they get close,
they are so excited.
No more words.
In the name of this place we drink in with our breathing,
stay quiet like a flower, so the nightbirds will start singing.
FOLDED INTO THE RIVER
Your face is the light in here
that makes my arms full of gentleness.
The beginning of a monthlong holiday,
the disc of the full moon, the shade of your hair,
these draw me in.
I dive into the deep pool of a mountain river,
folded into union,
as the split-second when the bat meets the ball
and there is one cry between us.
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 is 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.
HOW FINITE MINDS MOST WANT TO BE
You are the living marrow. The rest is hay,
and dead grass does not nourish a human being.
When you are not here,
this desire we feel has no traveling companion.
When the sun is gone, the soul’s clarity fades.
There is nothing but idiocy and mistakes.
We are half dead, inanimate, exhausted.
The way finite minds most want to be
is an ocean with a soul dissolved and swimming in it.
No one can describe that.
These words do not touch you.
Metaphors mentioning the moon
have no effect on the moon.
My soul, you are a master, a Moses, a Jesus.
Why do I stay blind in your presence?
You are Joseph at the bottom of his well.
Constantly working, but you do not get paid,
because what you do seems trivial, like play.
Now silence.
Unless these words fill with nourishment from the unseen,
they will stay empty,
and why should I serve my friends bowls with no food in them?
BUOYANCY
Love has taken away my practices
and filled me with poetry.
I tried to keep quietly repeating
No strength but yours, but I couldn’t.
I had to clap and sing.
I used to be respectable and chaste and stable,
but who can stand in this strong wind
and remember those things?
A mountain keeps an echo deep inside itself.
That is how I hold your voice.
I am scrap wood thrown in your fire,
quickly reduced to smoke and ash.
I saw you and became that empty.
This emptiness, more beautiful than existence,
it obliterates existence, and yet when it comes,
existence thrives and creates more existence.
The sky is blue.
The world is a blind man sitting beside the road.
But whoever sees your emptiness
sees beyond blue and beyond the blind man.
A great soul hides like Muhammad or Jesus
moving through a crowd in a city where no one knows him.
