WHATS & WHATEVERS

What was said to the rose to make it unbud
was said to me here in my heart.

What was told to the cypress to make it grow strong
and straight as a pencil,

what was whispered to jasmine to give it its scent,

whatever made
sugarcane sweet, whatever

blessed the Turkoman people of Chigil
with beauty and elegance,

whatever permits the petal of pomegranate to blush
like a human
has entered me now.

I blush. That which adds beauty to language
is passing through me.

Great doors open. I fill up with gratitude,
suck sugarcane,
ever in love with the One who bestows
these whats and whatevers to all!

 

 

The Lovers

will drink wine night and day,
will drink until they can wash away
the veils of intellect and
shame and modesty.
With this Love,
body, mind, heart and soul and pain
do not exist. If your Love is unconditional like this
you cannot be separate again.

 

 

THIS WORLD WHICH IS MADE OF OUR LOVE FOR THE EMPTINESS

Praise to the void that cancels existence! Existence:
this place which is made from our love of the emptiness!

Emptiness comes,
existence goes.

Praise to that process!
For years I pulled my existence out of the emptiness.

Then with one massive effort,
I stopped that repetitiveness,

and was free from who I was, free from presentness, fear, hope,
desire (for hope is pale shades of desire).

The here-and-now mountain of seeming
is just husk blown off into emptiness.

These words I'm saying too many of start to lose meaning:
existence, emptiness, mountain, husk.

Words and what they try to say fly
out of the window, off with the wind.

 

 

Come, come, whoever you are -

wonderer, worshipper, wanderer, lover of leaving,
whatever you are.
This is no caravan of despair.

Come - even if you have failed
and dropped out dozens of times -

Come on, try again, come.

 

 

'NOBODY'

says it correctly.
What is Paradise
but nothingness ?

The religion and doctrine of Lovers is
void,
emptiness,
non-existence.

 

 

THE SPIRITUAL TOURISTS

who idly ask: How much is that?
...Oh, I'm just looking,
pick up a hundred items and put them down.
They are shadows without substance.

What is spent is Love
and two eyes wet with weeping.
But tourists walk into a souk,
and their whole lives
suddenly evaporate.

Where did you go? Nowhere.
What did you eat? Nothing much.

Even if you don't know what you want,
buy something, to be part of the come and go.

Even start a vast, insane project like Noah did,
for it makes absolutely no difference
what people think of you. Just flow.

 

 

I died from minerality and turned vegetable

and from vegetableness I died and then turned animal.
I died from animality and became a man.

Then why fear disappearance by death?

Next time I die
I'll sprout wings like those of angels;

then, after that, soaring higher than mere angels -
what you cannot imagine -
that's what I'll be.

 

 

Soul receives from soul the knowledge, not by book

and not from tongue, and not through art

If the knowledge comes out of silence of the mind, this is
the illumination of the heart.

 

 

I said: 'You're very harsh.'

'But,' He answered,

'My harshness comes from goodness,
not from rancour, not from spite.

I strike down those who enter saying, "I..." -
for this is Love's tabernacle, not a cocktail party.

Rub your eyes...behold the image of your heart!'

 

 

I AM AND AM NOT

I’m swimming
in the flood
which has yet to come

I’m shackled
in the prison
which has yet to be built

I am the checkmate
in a future game of chess

I'm drunk with your wine
which remains untasted

I'm slain on a battlefield
of long ago

I don't
know the difference
between idea and reality

Like a shadow
I am
and am not.

 

 

O Giver of life, release me from Reason

that it might depart and flit
from vanity to vanity.
Break open my skull, pour in the wine of madness.
Let me be mad as You are; mad with You, mad with life.
Beyond the commonsense of the conventional
and respectable sanity
and the information-infection
a desert burns white-hot
where Your dervish-sun whirls in every particle of light -

O Lord, drag me there, let me roast in Perfection!

 

 

God has given us a dark wine

so strong that,
drinking it, we leave both worlds.

God has put into hashish a great power
to free the taker of the consciousness of self.

God has made sleep so
that it stops us thinking.

There are thousands of wines
that can overpower our minds.

Don't think all ecstasies
are similar.

Every object, every being,
is a wine-jar of delight.

Be a connoisseur,
taste with caution:
any wine will make you drunk.

Judge like a king, and choose the best,
the ones unadulterated with fear of what folk say,
or some contingent "duty" or "necessity."

Drink the wine that makes your soul float,
moves you
as a camel moves when it's been untied,

and is just ambling about - loafing, if you like.

 

THE TENT

Outside: the freezing desert night.
Another night inside gets warmer, illuminating me.
Though the earth be covered with impenetrable thorns
In here there is a green and gentle meadow.

When the continents are devastated -
cities, towns and everything between
scorched and blackened -

the only news is future full of grief -
while inside me there is no news at all.

This is our intimacy, my beloved friend*:
anywhere you put your foot,
feel me in the firmness under it.

How is it, soul-mate, that
I see your world and don't see you ?

Listen to the whispers inside poems,
follow their intimate suggestions

and never leave their premises.

*His beloved mentor Shams-i-Tabrizi.

 

Jalal-ud-Din Rumi was known in Persia and Afghanistan as Jalaluddin Balkhi - because he was born (1207) in Balkh, where Omar Khayyam was educated nearly 200 years earlier.
When he was about 10 years old he fled the advancing Mongols to Konya in Anatolia (Rum).

 

POEMS AND FRAGMENTS AFTER RUMI

What makes the Sufi?
Not the patched robe,
nor beard, nor doctrine,
not gentle dissidence,
nor doing good,
nor being good apart,
nor even
generosity in poverty -
but the rarest quality:
Purity of Heart.

 

 

AFTER LINES BY RUMI ON THE DEATH
HIS BELOVED MENTOR
SHAMS-I-TABRIZI

You got tired of
variable wines
and left the tavern for
the tavern of Eternity.
You joined the Sun*
and gave up wanting to be
somebody
You flew towards
thankfulness:
that infinite around us.

Talking is pain. Rest no more
in mine, but in the
bosom of eternity.

[*Shams means 'sun', and derives from the Akkadian name for the sun-god: Shamash]

 

Way beyond notions
of right and wrong
beyond the throng
and oceans
of humanity there
is a meadow
on an island, where
I'll meet you.
Meet you there!

 

 

Part of a load
not rightly balanced
I drop off into grass,
to graze where I may fall,
and become earth,
and that is all,
all that will come to pass.

 

 

The invisible ocean
has offered you so much -
and you call it Death!