| This is how the Mathnawi (Mesnevi) starts: Listen to the story told by the reed of being separate. "Since I was cut from the reedbed, I have made this crying sound. Anyone separated from someone he loves understands what I say. Anyone pulled from a source longs to go back At any gathering I am there, mingling in the laughing and the grieving, a friend to each, but few will hear the secrets hidden within the notes. No ears for that. Body flowing out of spirit, spirit up from body. We can't conceal thar mixing, but it's not given us to see the soul." The reed flute is fire, not wind. Be nothing. hear the love-fire tangled in the reed notes, as bewilderment melts into wine. The reed is a friend to all who want the fabric torn and drawn away. The reed is hurt and salve combining. Intimacy and longing for intimacy in one song A disasterous surrender, and a fine love, together. The one who secretly hears this is senseless. A tongue has one customer, the ear. The power of a cane flute comes from its making sugar in the reedbed. Whatever sound it has is for everyone. Days full of wanting, let them go by without worrying that they do. Stay where you are, inside such a pure, hollow note. |
| Rumi poetry |
 |
| Poetic interpretations by Coleman Barks |
| Do you approve of love-madness? I need a mouth as wide as the sky to say the nature of a True Person, language as large as longing. The fragile vial inside me often breaks. No wonder I go mad and disappear for three days every month with the moon. For anyone in love with you, it's always these invisible days. I've lost the thread of the story I was telling. My elephant roams his dream of Hindustan again. Narrative, poetics, destroyed, my body, a dissolving, a return. Friend, I've shrunk to a hair trying to say your story. Would you tell mine? I've made up so many love stories. Now I feel fictional. Tell me! The truth is, you are speaking, not me. I am Sinai, and you are Moses walking there. This poetry is an echo of what you say. A piece of land can't speak, or know anything! Or if it can, only within limits. The body is a device to calculate the astronomy of the spirit. Look through that astrolabe and become oceanic. Why this distracted talk? It's not my fault I rave. You did this. Do you approve of my love-madness? Say yes. What language will you say it in, Arabic or Persian, or what? Once again, I must be tied up. Bring the curly ropes of your hair. Now I remember the story. A True Man stares at his old shoes and sheepskin jacket. Every day he goes up to his attic to look at his work-shoes and worn-out coat. This is his wisdom, to remember the original clay and not get drunk with ego and arrogance. To visit those shoes and jacket is praise. The Absolute works with nothing. The workshop, the materials are what does not exist. Try and be a sheet of paper with nothing on it. Be a spot of ground where nothing is growing, where something might be planted, a seed, possibly, from the Absolute. |
| Raw, cooked, boiled A chickpea leaps almost over the rim of the pot where it�s being boiled. "Why are you doing this to me?" The cook knocks him down with the ladle. "Don�t you try to jump out. You think I�m torturing you. I�m giving you flavor, so you can mix with spices and rice and be the lovely vitality of a human being. Remember when you drank rain in the garden. That was for this." Grace first. Sexual pleasure, then a boiling new life beings, and the Friend has something good to eat. Eventually the chickpea will say to the cook, "Boil me some more. Hit me with the skimming spoon. I can�t do this by myself. I�m like an elephant that dreams of gardens back in Hindustan and doesn�t pay attention to his driver. You�re my cook, my driver, my way into existence. I love your cooking." The cook says, "I was once like you, fresh from the ground. Then I boiled in time, and boiled in the body, two fierce boilings. My animal soul grew powerful. I controlled it with practices, and boiled some more, and boiled once beyond that, and became your teacher." |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|