Rumi

(translated by Coleman Barks)

There was a dawn I remember
when my soul heard something
from your soul. I drank water
from your spring and felt
the current take me.

A mountain keeps an echo deep inside itself.
That's how I hold your voice.

What can I say to someone so curled up with wanting,
so constricted in his love?
Break your pitcher against a rock.
We don't need any longer
to haul pieces of the ocean around.

There is a secret medicine
given only to those who hurt so hard
they can't hope.
The hopers would feel slighted if they knew.

Don't hand me another glass of wine.
Pour it in my mouth.
I've lost the way to my mouth.

A candle is made to become entirely flame.
In that annihilating moment
it has no shadow.
It is nothing but a tongue of light
describing a refuge.

Dear soul, if you were not friends
with the vast nothing inside,
why would you always be casting your net
into it, and waiting so patiently?

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

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don't open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.