Rumi, The Big Red Book, page 37
Who says the eternal being does not exist?
Who says the sun has gone out?
Someone who climbs up on the roof,
and closes his eyes tight,
and says, I don’t see anything.
When you feel your lips becoming infinite and sweet,
like the moon in a sky,
when you feel that spaciousness inside,
Shams of Tabriz will be there too.
A ruby with a sweet taste,
absorbing wine-light.
I could tell you the name of this grape, but why?
I serve one who keeps secrets.
Already tightly bound,
we are wrapped with yet another chain.
We have lost everything,
but here is another disaster.
Held in the curls of your hair,
we feel a rope around our neck.
Those on the way are almost invisible to those who are not.
A man or a woman recognizes God and starts out.
The others say he, or she, is losing faith.
I want a poet who cannot leave the friend.
If he could, and still be always in love,
he would be a master, or he couldn’t.
Give us poets like that.
The sun is love.
The lover, a speck circling the sun.
A spring wind moves to dance
any branch that is not dead.
Do not let your throat tighten with fear.
Take sips of breath all day and night,
before death closes your mouth.
If I gave up sanity,
I could fill a hundred versions of you.
There is no liquid
like a tear from a lover’s eye.
I honor those
who try to rid themselves of any lying,
who empty the self
and have only clear being there.
God only knows, I don’t,
what keeps me laughing.
The stem of a flower moves
when the air moves.
I reach for a piece of wood. It turns into a lute.
I do some meanness. It turns out helpful.
They say one must not travel during the holy month.
Then I start out, and wonderful things happen.
You are the pump of my pulse,
so the good or bad I do is due to you.
Now my eyesight is going,
which is also your fault,
since you are the lightpoints in my eyes.
Each moment you call me to you and ask how I am,
even though you know.
The love I answer you with
stirs like wind through cypress.
Your love fills my chest, then empties,
then comes back to put its baggage down.
Now it has gone again.
Please, I call out. Stay still for a day or two.
So you sit down here with me,
and evidently have forgotten how to move.
As you start out on the way,
the way appears.
As you cease to be,
true life begins.
As you grow smaller,
the world cannot contain you.
You will be shown a being
that has no you inside it.
Dear mind, such a traveler, always moving,
like a fish looking for the sea,
while the great heart’s ocean waits,
all around and inside it.
How can you live outside this love?
You have not noticed the tears of the poor.
You are ecstatic, and the smoke of that clouds your sight.
There are those around you in great pain.
Still you talk about the subtle beauty.
Real love moves through humiliation.
Love has nothing to do with being admired.
The friend lives in the lover’s eyes,
as the divine mystery does
in a plant or a fish.
What human beings are thirsty for
is flowing now from my eyes.
Every day your wind is blowing in my head.
I am restless and wildly alive with it.
This is nothing like being drunk,
with its joy of wine-rush,
then the sad hangover.
This is continuous,
blowing steadily throughout waking and sleeping,
your love, this wind,
moving the air so strongly and the same,
day after day, after night,
after day.
Chapter 40
Columba: Noah’s Dove
The Dutch astronomer Petrus Plancius named the constellation
Columba in 1592. It is a very small, faint constellation from our vantage point, as no doubt are we from its. The name refers to the dove sent out by Noah that came back with a piece of greenery, bringing the good news that the Flood was receding. Columba means “dove” in Latin.
Never too many fish in a swift creek,
never too much water for fish to live in.
No place is too small for lovers,
nor can lovers see too much of the world.
An ecstatic seed planted anywhere on earth
comes up with this crop we plant.
The music of a reed flute heard anywhere
floats in the air as proof of our loving.
I say, Bring the simple wine that makes me free.
You say, There is a hurricane coming!
I say, Let’s have some wine then,
and sit here like old statues and watch.
The prophets were all commanded
to stay in the company of lovers.
We take warmth from fire,
but fire goes out in the presence of ashes.
I planted roses, but without you, they were thorns.
I hatched peacock eggs. Snakes were inside.
Played the harp, sour music.
I went to the eighth heaven. It was the lowest hell.
I say what I think I should do.
You say, Die.
I say my lamp’s oil has turned to water.
You say, Die.
I say I burn like a moth in the candle of your face.
You say, Die.
Eyes. You say, Keep them open.
Liver. You say, Keep it working.
I mention the heart-center.
You ask, What is there?
Much love for you.
Keep it for yourself.
Secrets try to enter our ears.
Do not prevent them.
Do not hide your face.
Do not let us be without music and wine.
Do not let us breathe once
without being where you are.
We are confused as lovers always are.
You walk in and out among the confusions, unaffected,
but anyone trying to follow you will be confused.
Every day, this pain. Either you are numb,
or you do not understand love.
I write out my love story.
You see the writing, but you do not read it.
The sun coming up brings clear wine-air.
Being sober is not living.
Listen to the longing of a stringless harp.
Stand watch over this burning.
You come closer, though you never left.
Water flows, and the stream stays full.
You are a bag of musk. We are the fragrance.
Is musk ever separated from its scent?
When you are with everyone but me,
you are with no one.
When you are with no one but me,
you are with everyone.
Instead of being so bound up with everyone,
be everyone. When you become that many,
you are nothing. Empty.
If your guide is your ego,
do not rely on luck for help.
You sleep through the day,
and the nights are short.
By the time you wake up,
your life may be over.
Stay here today and tomorrow, my friend.
Wait with me.
Generous and selfish actions,
both come with every day.
Lovers take direct and also wandering ways,
with no treachery in either.
The great ocean of the heart plays and spends
its coral and its pearls, giving everything away,
holding nothing back.
The body, a seashell, opens its mouth.
Ah, says the ocean-heart,
if the soul could not find a way in,
how am I to fit?
There is a soul within your soul,
a jewel inside the mountain.
Solitary Sufi dervish going by,
you have the mystery of your journey’s end
traveling with you.
Chapter 41
Draco: The Dragon
Draco was one of the original forty-eight constellations listed by the first-century astronomer Ptolemy, and it remains one of the eighty-eight modern ones. The ancient Egyptians associated it with a fierce protective goddess whose body was a composite of crocodile, lioness, human woman, and hippopotamus.
Whispering at dawn:
Do not keep from me what you know.
Answer: Some things are to understand
but not to say. Be quiet.
I saw you last night in the gathering,
but could not take you openly in my arms,
so I put my lips next to your cheek,
pretending to talk privately.
I want to hold you close like a lute,
so we can cry out with loving.
You would rather throw stones at a mirror?
I am your mirror, and here are the stones.
Someone who does not bloom at the sight of you
is empty and numb like a drum stored away.
Someone who does not enjoy the names of God
and the words of the prophets
remains apart from those.
Something opens our wings.
Something makes boredom and hurt disappear.
Someone fills the cup in front of us.
We taste only sacredness.
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?
My ego is stubborn, often drunk, impolite.
My loving, finely sensitive, impatient, confused.
Please take messages from one to the other,
reply and counterreply.
I will never look for somewhere else to live,
no longer shy about how I love.
My eyes open. You are everywhere.
Collyrium: Eye medicine for clearing sight
and strengthening circulation.
Love comes sailing through and I scream.
Love sits beside me like a private supply of itself.
Love puts away the instruments
and takes off the silk robes. Our nakedness
together changes me completely.
Much commotion at your door,
all attention drawn that way.
Remember, even though I have done terrible things,
I can still see the whole world in your face.
The wine forbidden in this place
creates life for the inner being.
Fill with that and forget consequences.
There is no beginning or end.
I hear you, and I am everywhere, a spreading music.
You have done this many times.
You already own me, but once more
you buy me back into being.
No longer a stranger,
you listen all day to these crazy love-words.
Like a bee, you fill hundreds of homes with honey,
though yours is a long flight from here.
I am a mountain. You call. I echo.
This image that looks like me was painted by the friend.
You think I am speaking these words?
When a key turns in a lock,
the lock makes a little opening sound.
Your presence is a river that refreshes everyone,
a rose-garden fragrance.
Do not worry about making doorways
between individual lovers
when this flow is so all around.
The one who is keeping time in me,
you that turn my heart inside out,
keep changing this shape,
however you want.
Who is this that lifts and fills my heart?
The same that gave you life.
Who sometimes puts the falcon’s hood over your eyes.
Be still.
Who other times takes that away,
loosens the leg binding, and hands you to the sky.
Now, hunt.
La Hawl, No Strength, calls out for grace.
It sometimes protects, but at other times
troubles begin when you say, No strength.
What is this No Strength, La Hawl?
No strength but yours?
Chapter 42
Capricorn: The Sea Goat
The fish-tailed seagoing goat Capricorn is associated with Pan, who turned himself partly into a fish to escape the monster Typhon.
Lightning, your presence
from ground to sky.
No one knows what becomes of me,
when you take me so quickly.
The wind is what you say.
The nightbird is drunk with the syllables of your name,
over and over, like the strokes of a portrait
being carefully painted in the tall space inside of me.
Birdsong, wind,
the water’s face.
Each flower, remembering the fragrance,
I know you are closeby.
I love this giving my life to you,
or to anyone who knows someone who knows you,
caught as I am in your curling hair,
inside your Kashmiri-witch eyes.
Held like this to draw in milk,
no will, tasting clouds of milk,
never so content.
Since I have been away from you,
I only know how to weep.
Like a candle, melting is who I am.
Like a harp, any sound I make is music.
What I most want
is to spring out of this personality,
then to sit apart from that leaping.
I have lived too long where I can be reached.
Happy, not from anything that happens.
Warm, not from fire or a hot bath.
Light, I register zero on a scale.
Burning with longing-fire,
wanting to sleep with my head on your doorsill,
my living is composed only
of this trying to be in your presence.
Begin as creation, become a creator.
Never wait at a barrier.
In this kitchen stocked with fresh food,
why sit content with a cup of warm water?
I stand up, and this one of me
turns into a hundred of me.
They say I circle around you.
Nonsense. I circle around me.
I cannot tell my secrets.
I have no key to that door.
Something keeps me joyful,
but I cannot say what.
A drunk comes in off the road with a flask.
The cup going round and round,
hand to hand, suddenly slips, shatters.
Cups do not last long among drunks.
They say I tell the truth. Then they ask me
to do a puppet show of myself in the bazaar.
