Rumi, The Big Red Book, page 39
saying loudly the ocean’s secret as I went.
Then, spent there, I slept like fog
against the cliff, another stillness.
I used to have fiery intensity
and a flowing sweetness.
The waters were illusion.
The flames, made of snow.
Was I dreaming then?
Am I awake now?
I run around looking for the friend.
My life is almost over, but I am still asleep.
When it happens, if it happens,
that I meet the friend,
will I get the lost years back?
We search the world for the great untying
of what was wed to us at birth
and gets undone at dying.
We sleep beside a stream, thirsty.
Cursed and unlucky his whole life,
an old man finishes up in a niche
of a ruin, inches from the treasure.
There is a desert I long to be walking,
a wide emptiness, peace,
beyond any understanding of it.
When the soul first put on the body’s shirt,
the ocean lifted up all its gifts.
When love first tasted the lips of being human,
it started singing.
Slave, be aware
that the Lord of all the East is here.
A flickering stormcloud
shows his lightnings to you.
Your words are guesswork.
He speaks from experience.
There is a huge difference.
Which is worth more, a crowd of thousands,
or your own genuine solitude?
A little while alone in your room
will prove more valuable than anything else
that could ever be given you.
Whoever drinks your love
takes in new life and new again.
Death used to follow me everywhere, threatening.
Then it caught your fragrance and left.
Pleasures end,
unless they fill with love.
Every rhythm must have love in it,
or it does not flow.
Rain pours down over the ocean.
Pearls form from one love-drop.
Chapter 47
Boötes: The Herdsman
The Herdsman is sitting down smoking his pipe, contemplating the stars he is made of, and the others he is not. In another version, he is herding the Great Bear. Arcturus, the chief star in this constellation, means the “bear herder.”
I saw grief drinking a cup of sorrow,
and I called out,
It tastes sweet, does it not?
You have caught me,
grief answered,
and you have ruined my business.
How can I sell sorrow
when you know it is a blessing?
Love lit a fire in my chest,
and anything that was not love left:
intellectual subtlety, philosophy
books, school.
All I want now
to do or hear
is poetry.
Love is that that never sleeps,
nor even rests, nor stays
for long with those that do.
Love is language
that cannot be said,
or heard.
With your lips not here
I kiss rubies to remember.
When I cannot sip from you,
I put my lip on the cup’s lip.
Instead of reaching into your sky,
I kneel and take handfuls of earth.
Be fair. Admit that love has in it
all the righteousness we need.
Confess that you are willing to forget
and be numb enough to call
some low desire a holy name.
Live as evidence
that there is a way
from wanting to longing.
You are from a country beyond this universe,
yet your best guess is
you are made of earth and ashes.
You engrave this physical image everywhere
as a sign that you have forgotten
where you are from.
Essence is emptiness.
Everything else, accidental.
Emptiness brings peace to your longing.
Everything else, dis-ease.
In this world of trickery
emptiness is what your soul wants.
We are not afraid of God’s blade,
or of being chained up,
or of having our heads severed.
We are burning up quickly,
tasting a little hellfire as we go.
You cannot imagine
how little it matters to us
what people say.
Come to this street
with only your sweet fragrance.
Do not walk into this river
wearing a robe.
Paths go from here to there,
but do not arrive from somewhere.
There are no ways.
It is time now to live naked.
Soul serves as a cup for the juice
that leaves the intellect in ruins.
That candle came and consumed me,
about whose flame
the universe flutters in total confusion.
The mystic dances in the sun,
hearing music others do not.
Insanity, they say, those others.
If so, it is a very gentle, nourishing sort.
This love is beyond the range of language,
but you come in asking, How is your heart?
holding your robe up slightly.
I answer, Hold it higher.
This slaughterhouse floor is running with blood.
Leave, mind.
No one is mindful here.
Even if you shrink to one hair,
still there is no room.
Look at this morning light.
How could a candle ever improve this?
Hallaj the whirlwind said, Anal-Haqq,
and swept the dust from where he walked.
He dove in the ocean of emptiness
and found this pearl for both of us,
I am the truth.
You are gone from sight,
not from inside my love.
You are always there.
I travel about the world,
hoping at the end that you will show me
my wandering way home.
Chapter 48
Aries: The Ram
In Greek mythology Aries represents the golden ram that rescued Phrixos, taking him to the land of Colchis, where Phrixos sacrificed him to the gods and hung the skin in a sacred grove, where it became known as the Golden Fleece.
I want to be where
your bare foot walks,
because maybe before you step,
you will look at the ground.
I want that blessing.
Would you like to have revealed to you
the truth of the friend?
Leave the rind,
and descend into the pith.
Fold within fold,
the beloved drowns in his own being.
This world is drenched with that drowning.
Love perfected and whole, you arrive.
Words throng my soul, but none come out.
A traveler meets his joy
and his despair at once.
Dying of thirst, I stand here
with springwater flowing around my feet.
Spring overall.
But inside us there is another unity.
Behind each eye here,
one glowing weather.
Every forest branch moves differently in the breeze,
but as they sway, they connect at the roots.
A drunk sees me coming and claps his hands,
Look here. Our pilgrim has come back.
Against all his repentance vows.
It is true, but he does not know much
about glassmaking, the painstaking work.
Remember. The more effort goes in,
the easier we are to break.
Rain falls on one man,
he runs into his house.
But the swan spreads its wings and says,
Pour more on me of that power
I was fashioned from.
Around and around all night
in the house of the friend.
This is how it must be,
because the beloved needs
the cup empty, again empty.
What’s the lover to do,
but humiliate himself
and wander your rooms?
If he kisses your hair,
do not wonder why.
Sometimes in the madhouse
they gnaw on their chains.
Last night the friend came to visit.
I asked night to keep the secret.
But look, said night,
behind you the sun is rising.
How could I show anyone anything?
My spirit saw how down and dull I was
and came and sat laughing on my bed.
Holding my brow. Sweetheart,
I cannot bear to see you like this.
This is how I would die
into the love I have for you.
As pieces of cloud
dissolve in sunlight.
Someone who does not run
toward the allure of love
walks a road where nothing lives.
But this dove here
senses the love-hawk floating above,
and waits, and will not be driven
or scared to safety.
Looking at form delights you,
but move beyond this circle of seeing.
There is no end to wisdom,
no boundaries for awareness,
no sky, no place to rest.
Leap up and dance when the song of the soul begins,
drum and flute notes moving together.
Your old grief jumps in the fire of that telling.
It is time to weep.
Only if you deny yourself,
will you die enough to know the mystery of union.
Not God filling you,
but you being emptied of self.
Anything else is arrogant and false.
Chapter 49
Delphinus: The Dolphin
Delphinus is a leaping dolphin, perhaps the one that saved the poet and musician Arion. Dolphins are fabulously helpful. The four stars in the dolphin’s head are known as Job’s Coffin.
Flowers open every night across the sky
as the peace of keeping a vigil
kindles the emptiness.
Do not think for a moment
that you have found the goal of your love.
Do not stand still in the ranks.
You have no place with uniforms at rest.
You might as well consent to be a corsage,
or a rose in some beautiful woman’s hair.
A road may end at a single house,
but it is not love’s road.
Love is a river.
Drink from it.
One who does what the friend wants done
will never need a friend.
There is bankruptcy that is pure gain.
The moon stays bright
when it does not avoid the night.
A rose’s rarest essence
lives in the thorn.
A light wind coming downhill,
the nightbird’s song.
The strange writing I read
on my lover’s door
says the same message
now being called out over the rooftops.
My memory of your face
prevents my seeing you.
Lightning veils your brow.
Recalling our kissing,
I cannot kiss you know.
So strange, such sweetness
could keep us apart.
Your fragrance fills the meadow.
Your mouth appears in a red anemone,
but when those reminders leave,
my own lips open,
and in whatever I say, I hear you.
How long are you going to beat me like a drum
and make me sigh for you like a violin?
You answer, Come. I will hold you close
and stroke you like a lute.
But I feel more like a flute
that you put in your mouth and then neglect to blow.
I realize that the dawn when we will meet again
will never break,
so I give it up, little by little, this love.
But something in me laughs when I say this,
someone shaking his head and chuckling softly,
Hardly, hardly.
A bird delegation comes to Solomon complaining,
Why is it you never criticize the nightingale?
Because my way, the nightingale explains,
is different. Mid-March to mid-June
I sing. The other nine months
while you continue chirping, I am silent.
You thought union was a way
that you could decide to go.
But the world of the soul
follows things rejected and almost forgotten.
Your true guide drinks
from an undammed stream.
This mud-body is clear epiphany.
Angels wish they could move as I move.
Purity? Cherubim babies
long for my innocence.
Courage? Armies of demons
flee my uplifted hand.
The deepest grain markings in me are longings.
In the center of desire is that which wants to disappear
in the wine taste that has something of you in it.
Love weeps its grief.
Night whispers, Your hair.
As a cypress opens its branches to the dark,
I live blessed like a tree.
Do not withhold the good news about yourself.
Look at your companions smiling. They know.
Your love-room is not a prison,
though it does say above the door,
You will never leave this place.
Chapter 50
Cetus: The Sea Monster, or Kraken
Andromeda, chained to a rock in the surf as a sacrifice to Cetus, is rescued by Perseus. The constellation Cetus is in a region of the sky called the Water, along with Aquarius, Pisces, and the River, Eridanus. It is well away from the galactic plane and the Milky Way’s obscuring dust. As a result, far distant galaxies are visible, the brightest being Messier 77, a ninth-magnitude spiral galaxy.
Spring paints the countryside.
Cypress trees grow even more beautiful,
but we stay inside.
Lock the door.
Come to me naked.
No one is here.
How will you know the difficulties of being human,
if you are always flying off to blue perfection?
Where will you plant your grief seeds?
Workers need ground to scrape and hoe,
not the sky of unspecified desire.
Rise. Move around the center
as pilgrims wind the Kaaba.
Being still is how one clay clod
sticks to another in sleep.
Movement wakes us up
and unlocks new blessings.
You walk in like you are about to say,
Enough of this.
But it will take more than frowns and harsh talking
to make my love leave.
This is the undauntable bird
who has never been caged, or felt fear.
Imagining is like feeling around
in a dark lane, or washing
your eyes with blood.
You are the truth
from foot to brow. Now,
what else would you like to know?
