Let's Go Home
Late and starting to rain, it's time to go home.
We've wandered long enough in empty buildings.
I know it's tempting to stay and meet those new people.
I know it's even more sensible
to spend the night here with them,
but I want to be home.
We've seen enough beautiful places with signs on them
saying, "This is God's house."
That's seeing the grain like the ants do,
without the work of harvesting.
Let's leave grazing to cows and go
where we know what everyone really intends,
where we can walk around without clothes on.
Let the Letter Read You
-----------------------
Why stay so long where your words are scattered
and doing no good? I've sent a letter a day
for a hundred days. Either you don't read the mail,
or you've forgotten how to leave.
Let the letter read you. Come back.
No one understands who you are in that prison
for the stonefaced. You've escaped,
but still you sit there like a falcon
on the window ledge. You are both water
and stream, but you think you need something
to drink like a lion or a deer.
How far is it? How far is the light of the moon
from the moon? How far is the taste of candy
from the lip? Every second you give away light.
We accept. We like this market.
Your love is a sweet poison we eat from your hand
to dissolve and drain away the ego-life
now spraying this fountain from us.
Sometimes I Forget Completely
-----------------------------
Sometimes I forget completely
what companionship is.
Unconscious and insane, I spill sad
energy everywhere. My story
gets told in various ways: A romance,
a dirty joke, a war, a vacancy.
Divide up my forgetfulness to any number,
it will go around.
These dark suggestions that I follow,
are they part of some plan?
Friends, be careful. Don't come near me
out of curiosity, or sympathy.
The Rights of Crying
--------------------
Why so fugitive? I have some right
to be with you, rights of crying.
If there were laughter all around me,
I would feel closed in if you weren't there.
With my children and everyone else I love,
I'd still be distracted.
How can I tie down one of your feet?
I do have enough strength and patience.
No matter how far you go, even
beyond sunlight into where Jesus is visible,
I'll come and wait to be told
why you go away from me.
Say Yes Quickly
---------------
Forget your life. Say "God is great." Get up.
You think you know what time it is. It's time to pray.
You've carved so many little figurines, too many.
Don't knock on any random door like a beggar.
Reach your long hand out to another door, beyond where
you go on the street, the street
where everyone says, "How are you?"
and no one says "How aren't you?"
Tomorrow you'll see what you've broken and torn tonight,
thrashing in the dark. Inside you
there's an artist you don't know about.
He's not interested in how things look different in moonlight.
If you are here unfaithfully with us,
you're causing terrible damage.
If you've opened your loving to God's love,
you're helping people you don't know
and have never seen.
Is what I say true? Say yes quickly,
if you know, if you've known it
from before the beginning of the universe.
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Does sunset sometimes look like the sun's coming up?
Do you know what a faithful love is like?
You're crying. You say you've burned yourself.
But can you think of anyone who's not
hazy with smoke?
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Answers from the Elements
-------------------------
A whole afternoon field inside me from one stem of reed.
The messenger comes running toward me, irritated:
"Why be so hard to find?"
Last night I asked the moon about the Moon, my one question
for the visible world, Where is God?
The moon says, "I am dust stirred up
when he passed by." The sun, "My face is pale yellow
from just now seeing him." Water: "I slide on my head and face
like a snake, from a spell he said." Fire: "His lightning,
I want to be that restless." Wind, why so light?
"I would burn if I had a choice." Earth, quiet
and thoughtful? "Inside me I have a garden
and an underground spring."
This world hurts my head with its answers,
wine filling my hand, not my glass.
If I could wake completely, I would say without speaking,
why I'm ashamed of using words.
The Image of Your Body
----------------------
You've made it out of the city,
that image of your body, trembling with traffic
and fear slips behind.
Your face arrives in the redbud trees, and the tulips.
You're still restless.
Climb up the ladder to the roof.
You're by yourself a lot,
become the one that when you walk in,
luck shifts to the one who needs it.
If you've not been fed, be bread.
The New Rule
------------
It's the old rule that drunks have to argue
and get into fights.
The lover is just as bad: He falls into a hole.
But down in that hole he finds something shining,
worth more than any amount of money or power.
Last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street.
I took it as a sign to start singing,
falling *up* into the bowl of the sky.
The bowl breaks. Everywhere is falling everywhere.
Nothing else to do.
Here's the new rule: Break the wineglass,
and fall toward the glassblower's breath.
An Egypt That Doesn't Exist
---------------------------
I want to say words that flame
as I say them, but I keep quiet and don't try
to make both worlds fit in one mouthful.
I keep secret in myself an Egypt
that doesn't exist.
Is that good or bad? I don't know.
For years I gave away sexual love
with my eyes. Now I don't.
I'm not in any one place. I don't have a name
for what I give away. Whatever Shams
gave, that you can have from me.
Champion Lovemaker and Leader of Men
------------------------------------
If you could not feel tenderness and hurt.
If you could live in the poorhouse of not-wanting
and never be indignant.
If you could take two steps away from the beautiful one
you want so much to lie down with.
If you could trust there's a spirit-wife
for you somewhere, a whole harem of wives,
a nest, a jewel-setting where
when you sit down, you know
you've always wanted to be.
If you could quit living here and go there.
If you could remember clearly what you've done.
But strong hooks hold you in this wind.
So many people love you,
you mix with the color and smell and taste of surroundings.
Champion lovemaker and leader of men!
You can't give up your public fascination,
or your compassion for the dying.
There's another compassion you don't know yet,
but you may, when griefs disappear.
It's a place,
with no questioning thorns in the pasture grass.
If you could remember that you're not a crow,
but the mystic osprey that never needs to light,
you could be walking there
with Shams.
There's Nothing Ahead
---------------------
Lovers think they're looking for each other,
but there's only one search: Wandering
this world is wandering that, both inside one
transparent sky. In here
there is no dogma and no heresy.
The miracle of Jesus is himself, not what he said or did
about the future. Forget the future.
I'd worship someone who could do that!
On the way you may want to look back, or not,
but if you can say "There's nothing ahead,"
there will be nothing there.
Stretch your arms and take hold of the cloth of your clothes
with both hands. The cure for pain is in the pain.
Good and bad are mixed. If you don't have both,
you don't belong with us.
When one of us gets lost, is not here, he must be inside us.
There's no place like that anywhere in the world.
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1794
At night we fall into each other with such grace.
When it's light, you throw me back
like you do your hair.
Your eyes now drunk with God,
mine with looking at you,
one drunkard takes care of another.
1359
Do you think I know what I'm doing?
That for one breath or half-breath I belong to myself?
As much as a pen knows what it's writing,
or the ball can guess where it's going next.
1319
We have a huge barrel of wine, but no cups.
That's fine with us. Every morning
we glow and in the evening we glow again.
They say there's no future for us. They're right.
Which is fine with us.
1315
We've given up making a living.
It's all this crazy love poetry now.
It's everywhere. Our eyes and our feelings
focus together, with our words.
1303
I'm not talking out loud. I'm talking
to the ears of your spirit.
Remember what I've said. Tomorrow
I'll say openly what I'm saying tonight.
1300
You say you have no sexual longing any more.
You're one with the one you love.
This is dangerous.
Don't believe that I have a love like that.
If one day you see a picture of how you think,
you'll hate yourself, openly.
XXXX
When I am with you, we stay up all night.
When you're not there, I can't go to sleep.
Praise God for these two insomnias!
And the difference between them.
The Breeze at Dawn
------------------
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don't go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don't go back to sleep.
--Rumi
The morning wind spreads its fresh smell.
We must get up and take that in,
that wind that lets us live.
Breathe before it's gone.
Dance, when you've 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.
-Rumi-
The clear bead at the center changes everything.
There are no edges to my loving now.
I've heard it said there's a window that opens
from one mind to another.
but if there's no wall, there's no need
for fitting the window, or the latch.
-- Rumi
from OPEN SECRET:VERSIONS OF RUMI, by john moyne and colemn barks
THE GUEST HOUSE
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violentlly sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
-Rumi
From _The Essential Rumi_, page 109.
trans. coleman barks