Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (مولانا جلال الدین محمد رومی, ) was born 800 years ago today. He is one of the most widely read poets in America today, and I like him, too. His brand of Sufism (which eventually became the "whirling dervishes") was an ecstatic passion for God and mankind; he wrote intimate love poems to God (or are they ecstatic worship poems to a lover?). Why is he so popular after 800 years? Universal truth.
Who is the luckiest in this whole orchestra? The reed.
Its mouth touches your lips to learn music.
All reeds, sugarcane especially, think only
of this chance. They sway in the canebreaks,
free in the many ways they dance.
Without you the instruments would die.
One sits close beside you. Another takes a long kiss.
The tambourine begs, Touch my skin so I can be myself.
Let me feel you enter each limb bone by bone,
so that what died last night can be whole today.
Why live some soberer way and feel you ebbing out?
I won't do it.
Either give me enough wine or leave me alone,
now that I know how it is
to be with you in constant conversation.
1 comment:
Gamble everything for love...
Half-heartedness doesn't reach into majesty.
You set out to find god,
but then you keep stopping for long periods
at mean-spirited roadhouses.
Don't wait any longer.
Dive in the ocean,
leave and let the sea be you...Rumi
Universal truth indeed!
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