Rumi, The Big Red Book, page 31
Moses, my soul, my friend,
when you hold me, this body is a walkingstick.
You throw it down, it becomes a snake.
You are the boy Jesus,
and I am your clay bird.
Breathe on me. Let me fly out of sight.
I am the column you lean against
that moans when you leave.
What cover do you draw over me now?
In one moment I am a stone,
then iron, then pure fire.
Now a jangling scale flopping about with nothing on it.
Now poised in balance showing weight and purchase.
Feeding on a certain pasture,
I am the pasture.
They are tasting me,
wolf, sheep, and shepherd.
Matter is meant to move and change.
That currency reveals meaning.
Those who belong with me
know I am the value these forms are tokens of.
A PREPOSTEROUS GUESS
Friend, you change what I lost
to a surprise gift.
You open my mouth in desire
and hand me the key.
A strange preposterous guess
seems righter and righter.
I let other fictions go.
I am the contents of your seed bag.
Scatter me over the ground.
Let me be quiet
in the middle of the noise.
THE VALUE OF THIS MOMENT
Morning wind and the feel of your face close.
A fragrance from China
through western Turkestan to here.
Is there word of Shams?
I am dressed with friendship.
Your voice says in my chest
the value of this moment: Partridge cry
on the mountainside, a human eye,
what people say in praise of sunlight and the nightsky,
of Joseph’s face and Jesus’ healing breath,
a walking cypress shadow, a field in spring, firelight.
Shams is all these,
and a guide, the hand that never pulls away.
TWO LOVINGS
Soul comes wearing a shape,
with fragrance, with the new-green,
with a trembling hand, with generosity.
No. That implies a being apart.
Companion and confessor at once,
red and yellow, you join me in the gathering,
and you stay away. You come late.
You are the source of two lovings,
fire one day, ice another.
THE CREATION WORD
Three days now it has been like this.
I dip my pitcher in the fountain.
It fills with blood.
The rose garden is all desert thorns and stone.
I chant spells to lure the genii back into the bottle.
Nothing happens.
A beloved’s frown destroys the lover.
Come back. Brighten my eye,
even if I do not deserve it.
My loving asks, What have I done?
A voice replies, Do not look to yourself.
The cause is beyond every here and now.
The life gift is given and then taken away.
It is not for us to know why, or how.
Grace comes with the creation word, Be.
That gate opens without hesitating.
Between the push of buh and the smooth launch of ee,
there is an infinite moment when everything happens.
AMAZED MOUTH
The soul: a wide listening sky
with hundreds of candles.
When anything is sold,
soul gets given in the cash.
People waiting at a door,
a ladder leaning on a roof,
someone climbing down.
The market square bright with understanding.
Listening opens its amazed mouth.
MASHALLAH2
There is someone swaying by your side,
lips that say, Mashallah. Mashallah.
Wonderful, God inside attraction.
A spring no one knew of wells up on the valley floor.
Lights inside a tent lovers move toward.
The refuse of Damascus gets turned over in the sun.
Be like that yourself. Say Mercy, mercy,
to the one who guides your soul, who keeps time.
Move, make a mistake, look up. Checkmate.
COME HORSEBACK
Come horseback through the spiderwebs of twilight,
as fifteen evenings of full moon, as the sun on holiday.
The stars performing every small zodiac wish
wheel into the presence of these lovers
where you remember me, look around,
and draw the blade of your question,
Where is the one whose candle burns in the dawn?
Where is the handful of dirt
that somehow joins with the light of the Pleiades?
You keep resurrecting like St. George.
Again. Where is the friend who calls presence
out of absence and cuts the umbilical
by mentioning Shams Tabriz?
YHU3
Flow inside me, source of the source of joy,
life essence, the wine of peace that moves in my hand,
then out, around . . . You know the rest.
Wound that opens in the ground, perfect shot,
wing-shadow, face of a strong worker, still delicate,
candle, a secret completely obvious.
You bring in the gift. You hand us each moment.
You are the value rivering along in any belonging,
lock of hair. You are the human center.
The ocean of meanings gets a puzzled look
when it sees this hilarious presence moving through.
Yhhhuuuuuuuuuu.
FORM IS ECSTATIC
There is a shimmering excitement in being sentient and shaped.
The caravan master sees his camels lost in it,
nose to tail, as he himself is, his friend,
and the stranger coming toward them.
A gardener watches the sky break into song,
cloud wobbly with what it is, bud and thorn the same.
Wind, water, wandering this essential state.
Fire, ground, gone. That is how it is with the outside.
Form is ecstatic.
Now imagine the inner. Soul, intelligence, the secret worlds.
And do not think the garden loses its ecstasy in winter.
It is quiet, but the roots are down there riotous.
If someone bumps you in the street, do not be angry.
Everyone careens about in this surprise. Respond in kind.
Let the knots untie, turbans be given away.
Someone drunk on this could drink a donkeyload a night.
Believer, unbeliever, cynic, lover,
all combine in the spirit-form we are.
But no one yet is awake like Shams.
GRACE GOT CONFUSED
One maddening drop, then another.
You pour wine like that for us now.
Remember when you poured full light,
all at once, a whole day?
You put your finger on your lips wanting quiet,
but those drops you drip keep talking.
It is not us. As you were killing Junnaiyd,
he said, More, more.
In each blood drop of his, a new Bestami.
The first that fell on ground grew Adam.
In the sky, Gabriel.
Those old days you poured according to merit.
Then grace got confused,
and you poured everybody some.
Bread does not deserve you,
yet you lived your life for bread.
You brought water and threw it at the water carrier.
What you showed Moses was not fire,
but a shape of consciousness.
Will that Friday ever come again
when you served your close friends individually?
Each moment a stranger and a friend meet. Shy.
Their bloods mix. Roses drop petals in autumn.
Offer your friendship to the prophets.
Do not think that they are ordinary people.
There is a huge difference in the quality of praying,
as between those you bless, and those you turn from.
THE MOON-SHAPED THRESHING FLOOR
I have heard enough Dos—Dismount,
when I am still looking for the road.
Enough Gos—Let’s go,
before I have even set up my tent.
Could I be spared these gos and dos?
Will I get to the moon-shaped threshing floor before I die?
I feel blessed with wandering in the love sun,
but I do not see the road.
I know it is here somewhere,
but I do not see its justice or its peace.
I ask the wind for word.
I look in wells for the moon’s image.
I am drying up like an August garden.
But I learn quickly like the same spot in spring,
in both states amazed at what happens
to just a piece of ground.
EVERY DETAIL SHOWS HOW THAT ONE IS IN LOVE
Daylight comes glowing from your green vault.
You measure and pour out a beaker of twilight bloodredness.
Gliding and whirling, many miles wide,
your ocean storms come into shore.
With all its trying and giving up,
the moon’s cap falls off the back of its head
as it lifts to see you.
Every morning the birds reword their praising,
the songs they sing,
by musicians already with you inside the grass.
Spirit wants to see. Love wants a lover.
You set flowing four flowings through the orchard.
Pure streamwater, glowing honey, fresh milk, dark red wine.
You do not give me a chance.
Wine on top of wine, I have no head,
no way to describe this cup.
In a sky so restless and changing
the moon wears a silver belt.
Every detail, every feature of every thing,
shows how that one is in love.
We strain and ask, then grow tired of talking.
The reed flute crying with breath gets quiet.
As we open your door, please be there.
Be held by a gratefulness that wants you head to toe.
THERE IS NOTHING AHEAD
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 don’t belong with us.
When one of us gets lost, is not here,
he must be inside us.
There is no place like that anywhere in the world.
THE NEW RULE
It is the old rule that drunks have to argue
and get into fights.
The lover is just as bad. He falls into a hole.
But down in that hole he finds something shining,
worth more than any amount of money or power.
Last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street.
I took it as a sign to start singing,
falling up into the bowl of sky.
The bowl breaks. Everywhere is falling everywhere.
Nothing else to do.
Here is the new rule. Break the wine glass,
and fall toward the glassblower’s breath.
UNMARKED BOXES
Don’t grieve. Anything you lose
comes round in another form.
The child weaned from mother’s milk
now drinks wine and honey mixed.
God’s joy moves from unmarked box to unmarked box,
from cell to cell. As rainwater, down into flowerbed.
As roses, up from ground.
Now it looks like a plate of rice and fish,
now a cliff covered with vines,
now a horse being saddled.
It hides within these
until one day it cracks them open.
Part of the self leaves the body when we sleep
and changes shape. You might say, “Last night
I was a cypress tree, a small bed of tulips,
a field of grapevines.” Then the phantasm goes away.
You are back in the room.
I do not want to make anyone fearful.
Hear what is behind what I say.
Ta-tum-tum, ta-tum, ta-ta-tum.
There is the light gold of wheat in the sun
and the gold of bread made from that wheat.
I have neither. I am only talking about them,
as a town in the desert looks up
at stars on a clear night.
SOMETIMES I FORGET COMPLETELY
Sometimes I forget completely
what companionship is. Unconscious and insane,
I spill sad energy everywhere.
My story gets told in various ways.
A romance, a dirty joke, a war, a vacancy.
Divide up my forgetfulness to any number.
It will go around.
These dark suggestions that I follow,
are they part of some plan?
Friends, be careful. Do not come near me
out of curiosity, or sympathy.
NO NEED TO ASK
The one who pours the wine pours again,
no need to ask.
Do you ask the moon to rise and give its light?
When ranks of soldiers dissolve, dismissed for a holiday,
when a lost hand reaches for the rescuing hand,
when a candle next to a mirrored sconce gets lit,
your presence enters my soul.
ALL RIVERS MOVING AT ONCE
Do not unstring the bow.
I am your four-feathered arrow that has not been used yet.
I am a strong knife-blade word,
not some if or maybe, dissolving in air.
I am sunlight slicing the dark.
Who made this night?
A forge deep in earth-mud.
What is the body?
Endurance.
What is love?
Gratitude.
What is hidden in our chests?
Laughter.
What else?
Compassion.
Let the beloved be a hat pulled down firmly on my head.
Or drawstrings pulled and tied tight around my chest.
How does love have hands and feet?
Love is the sprouting bed for hands and feet.
Your father and mother were playing love-games.
They came together, and you appeared.
Do not ask what love can make or do.
Look at the colors of the world.
The riverwater moving in all rivers at once.
The truth that lives in Shams’s face.
DRUNK WITH THE WHOLE
There are wild, wondering Sufis called qalandars,
who are constantly tickled with life.
It is scandalous how they love and laugh at any small event.
People gossip at them,
and that makes them deft in their cunning,
but really a great God-wrestling goes on
inside these wandering warriors,
a flood of sunlight that is drunk with the whole thing.
Someone is putting a spell on me.
Another expects me to repent.
Another runs alongside without feet,
drunk with the whole thing.
Friends rush out in the rain to be soaked with the sky.
Eyesight is holding understanding,
with the moon’s polite manner.
Tell the soldier about to go to war
how the cypress tree is turning green,
drunk with the whole thing.
Someone beyond questions of how and what for
sews patches on my robe.
Someone who watches the sea,
Mt. Sinai and friend, that one
comes whispering, Be drunk with the whole thing.
Tell the festival of sacrifice,
tell the Qur’an, tell the gate of heaven,
that there is a bunch out here singing
and drunk with the whole.
KISS OF SOLITUDE
I want a long kiss of solitude with the friend.
