Friends

Today (December 17) is the day that Rumi was reunited with the Beloved.

Ghazal 1716 is one of my favorites, and apropos of today's remembrence.

Tonight, take my spirit totally from my body, so that I
may no longer have shape and name in the world!
At this moment I am drunk in Thee - give me another
cup! Then I may be obliterated from the two worlds in Thee,
and be done with it.
When I have been annihilated through Thee and be-
come what Thou knowest, then I will take the cup of non-
existence and drink it, cup after cup.
When the spirit becomes radiant through Thee,
when the candle lights up - if not consumed by Thee it is raw,
raw.
Give me now the wine of nonexistence instant by
instant; when I have entered nonexistence, I will not know
the house from its roof.
When your nonexistence increases, the spirit will
prostrate itself to you a hundred times - oh you to whose
nonexistence thousands of existences are slave!
Give me wine, measure by measure! Deliver me from
my own existence! Wine is Thy special grace, intellect Thy
general grace.
Send up waves from nonexistence to steal me away!
How long will I pace the Oceans shore in fear?
The snare of my king Shams al-Din is catching
prey in Tabriz, but I have no fear of the snare, for I am
within it.

-- Ghazal 1716
Translation by William C. Chittick


If you bake bread with the wheat that grows on my grave
you'll become drunk with joy and
even the oven will recite ecstatic poems.
If you come to pay your respects
even my gravestone will invite you to dance
so don't come without your drum.
Don't be sad. You have come to Gods feast.
Even death cannot stop my yearning
for the sweet kiss of my love.
Tear my shroud and wear it as a shirt,
the door will open and you'll hear
the music of your soul fill the air.
I am created from the ecstasy of love and
when I die, my essence will be released
like the scent of crushed rose petals.
My soul wants to leap and join
the towering soul of Shams.

-- Ghazal (Ode) 683
Translated by Azima Melita Kolin
and Maryam Mafi

Hello! It's been a while since I posted...again. Please forgive me. First, I was dealing with the loss of my Grandma, and then I bought and moved to a house in another state.

So today, to make up for missing several weeks, I will post a few belated pieces to honor my Grandma Louise. All of these come directly from my copy of The Essential Rumi, as edited by Coleman Barks.

For Louise McDivitt, whose life was filled with song:

A Wished-For Song

You're song,
a wished-for song.

Go through the ear to the center
where sky is, where wind,
where silent knowing.

Pour seeds and cover them.
Blades will sprout
where you do your work.

*

Untitled

Let your throat-song
be clear and strong enough

to make an emperor fall full-length,
supplicant, at the door.

*

The Reed Flute's Song

Listen to the story told by the reed,
of being separated.

“Since I was cut from the reedbed,
I have made this crying sound.

Anyone apart 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 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: no concealing
that mixing. But it's not given us

to see the soul. The reed flute
is fire, not wind. Be that empty.”

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, one
song. A disastrous surrender

and a fine love, together. The one
who secretly hears this is senseless.

A tongue has one customer, the ear.
A sugarcane flute has such effect

because it was able to make sugar
in the reedbed. The sounds it makes

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.

Every thirst gets satisfied except
that of these fish, the mystics,

who swim a vast ocean of grace
still somehow longing for it!

No one lives in that without
being nourished every day.

But if someone doesn't want to hear
the song of the reed flute,

it's best to cut conversation
short, say good-bye, and leave.

*

Where Everything is Music

Don't worry about saving these songs!
And if one of your instruments breaks,
it doesn't matter.

We have fallen into a place
where everything is music.

The strumming and the flute notes
rise into the atmosphere,
and even if the whole world's harp
should burn up, there will still be
hidden instruments playing.

So the candle flickers and goes out.
We have a piece of flint, and a spark.

This singing art is sea foam.
The graceful movements come from a pearl
somewhere on the ocean floor.

Poems reach up like spindrift and the edge
of driftwood along the beach, wanting!

They derive
from a slow and powerful root
that we can't see.

Stop the words now.
Open the window in the center of your chest,
and let the spirits fly in and out.

*

Untitled

Dance, when you're broken open.
Dance, if you've torn the bandage off.
Dance in the middle of the fighting.
Dance in your blood.
Dance, when you're perfectly free.

Don't weep.
The joy that has gone
will come `round again in another form –
Have no doubt about this!

A child's first joy
comes from its mother's milk;
After the child is weaned
his joy comes from drinking sweet wine.

This supreme joy has no resting place -
It enters one form then another,
from box to box – an eternal movement
between heaven and earth.

Here it comes, pouring down from the sky,
seeping into the earth,
and rising up again as a bed of roses.

Now it is water, now a plate of rice,
Now the swaying trees, now a horse and rider.
It lies within these forms for awhile
then bursts forth to become something new.

Isn't this like our dreams? –
The body sleeps
while the soul moves on
to take other forms.
You say,
I dreamt I was a cypress, a bed of tulips,
the blossoms of roses and jasmines.

Then the soul returns, and you wake up –
the cypress is gone, the roses are gone.

I tell you truly,
everything you now see
will vanish like a dream.

I do not mean to trouble you, O friend,
with words so bold as these.
Perhaps you will only listen to God.
He speaks more gently than I.

But how will you ever hear Him with
All that blathering going on? –
Everyone is speaking about golden bread
yet no one has ever tasted it!

O my soul, where can I find rest
but in the shimmering love of his heart?
Where can I see the pure light of the Sun
but in the eyes of my own Shams-e Tabriz?

-- Version by Jonathan Star

Our drunkenness does not come from wine.
The joy of our gathering
does not come from the harp or rubaab.
With no celestial beauty to fill our cup,
Without friends, without singing, without wine,
We burst out like madmen,
rolling drunk on the floor.

-- Version by Jonathan Star and Shahram Shiva

The world is full of remedies,
but you have no remedies until God
opens a window for you.
Though you are unaware of that remedy now,
God will make it clear
in the hour of need.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-- Mathnawi II: 682-683
Version by Camille and Kabir Helminski