Doing a little dusting ....

a little bit of his story

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7016090.stm

Happy Birthday Rumi ... the world is different because you lived ,,,

I am different because Rumi lived..Happy Birthday Rumi

I just wanted to bring this back to the top of the forum because Hillfolk was speaking of Rumi and Slowhand was kind enough to point out that there was already a whole thread here.



Thanks Bl8tant.

topic 27576 is well special but i also really enjoy
topic 28493

The Freshness

When it's cold and raining,
you are more beautiful.

And the snow brings me
even closer to your lips.

The inner secret, that which was never born,
you are that freshness, and I am with you now.

I can't explain the goings,
or the comings. You enter suddenly,

and I am nowhere again.
Inside the majesty.

Translator: Coleman Barks

A Preposterous Guess

Friend, you change what I lost
to a surprise gift.

You open my mouth in desire
and hand me the key.

A strange, preposterous guess
seems righter and righter.

I let other fictions go.
I am the contents of your seed bag.
Scatter me over the ground.

Let me be quiet
in the middle of this noise.

Two Lovings

Soul comes wearing a shape,
with fragrance, with new green,
with a trembling hand, with generosity.
No, that implies being apart.

Companion and confessor at once,
red and yellow, you join me
in the gathering, and you stay away.

You come late.
You are the source of two lovings,
fire one day, ice another.

The Meeting

When the friend opens the door and says,
You are here, please come in.
It is such a pleasure to give up talking
and listen to his long story
about Khidr, the guide of souls.

A tailor cuts cloth uniquely for each person.
Springs open in the centre of the lake.
Trees move in the breeze that comes before dawn.

A nightingale sits in the rosebush and asks,
Who do you love? tell me.
No one else is here.

The rose, so long as you are you,
I cannot, This is the passionate demand,
the one the burning bush made of Moses.

I am a sacred pool. Take off your shoes.
Wade in. You are the essence
of place and placelessness, honoured one.
Take my hand.

The needle's eye will not accept
a strand of thread that is folded double.

So it is with you.
You find yourself holding the royal bowl
and welcoming all to the banquet.

The sun stands in fire up to it's chin
so we may have daylight.

When you take the hand of someone you love,
what happens to your hands?

Your darling comes, and you ask,
How can I help? Come here.

Reason wonders, Should I go?
And your loving, Should I run?

The one you love signals,
Yes. I want both of you.

The table is there. Sit down.
Choose the bright company.
Do not worry about food.

Now I pass to you this silence,
so that the alternations of night and day
with their flaming language
may finish the story.

- Rumi, from Bridge to the Soul, translated by Coleman Barks.

"KNOCK, AND HE WILL OPEN THE DOOR.

VANISH, AND HE WILL MAKE YOU SHINE LIKE THE SUN.

FALL, AND HE WILL RAISE YOU TO THE HEAVENS.

BECOME NOTHING, AND HE WILL TURN YOU INTO EVERYTHING.


RUMI

A Beautiful Walk Inside You

Through this blood veil
the lover sees a beautiful walk.

Reason says, There are only six
directions: north, east, south, west,
up and down. There is no way
out of those limits.

Love says, But I have
many times escaped.

Reason comes to a marketplace
and begins haggling prices.

Love wanders away with other
business to transact, something
to do with incomparable beauty.

There are secret things happening.
Hallaj listens to whispers
and walks off the speaker's
platform onto a scaffold.

Dreg drinkers have love perceptions
that reasonable men fiercely deny.

They say, We cannot go barefooted
in that courtyard. There is nothing
but thorns through there.

Love answers, The thorns are inside you.
Be silent, and pull what hurts
out of your loving's foot.

Then you will see gardens
with secluded rose bowers,
and they will be all inside you.

Shams is the sun
obscured by this cloud of words.

Maybe he will burn the overcast off
and let love clear and brighten.


Rumi.

Transparent Tree

I've traded my soul for the universe.
Don't Speak. The jeweler who thought

hew was buying gold to work with now
owns the mine! But commerce metaphors

are wrong. What has happened in me
is more profound, like a fish under-

water beginning ti say words! A
transparent tree grows in the night-sky

orchard where I have found a little
corner to be in, as when two planets

intersect. I have met Shams.

trans by Barks

They try to say what you are, spiritual or sexual?
They wonder about Solomon and all his wives.

In the body of the world, they say, there is a soul
and you are that.

But we have ways within each other
that will never be said by anyone.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Drowning

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.

We must drown, away from heroism,
and descriptions of heroism.

Like a pure spirit lying down, pulling
its body over it, like a bride her husband
for a cover to keep her warm.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

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.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing
there is a field. I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase each other,
doesn't make any sense.

-Rumi trans by Barks

The Silent Articulation of a Face
Rumi trans by Barks

Love comes with a knife, not some
shy question, and not with fears
for its reputation! I say
these things disinterestedly. Accept them
in kind. Love is a madman,

working his wild schemes, tearing off his clothes,
running through the mountains, drinking poison,
and now quietly choosing annihilation.

A tiny spider tries to wrap an enormous wasp.
Think of the spiderweb woven across the cave
where Muhammad slept! There are love stories,
and there is obliteration into love.

You've been walking the ocean's edge,
holding up your robes to keep them dry.

You must dive naked under and deeper under,
a thousand times deeper! Love flows down.

The ground submits to the sky and suffers
what comes. Tell me, is the earth worse
for giving in like that?

Don't put blankets over the drum!
Open completely. Let your spirit-ear
listen to the greeen dome's passionate murmur.

Let the cords of your robe be untied.
Shiver in this new love beyond all
above and below. The sun rises, but which way
does the night go? I have no more words.

Let the soul speak with the silent
articulation of a face.

Rumi ... ahhhhhh

This moment this love comes to rest in me,
many beings in one being.
In one wheat grain a thousand sheaf stacks.
Inside the needle's eye, a turning night of stars.

Rumi

Suddenly the drunken sweetheart appeared out of my door.
She drank a cup of ruby wine and sat by my side.
Seeing and holding the lockets of her hair
My face became all eyes, and my eyes all hands.

-Rumi
Translator: Shahram Shiva

Two Friends

A certain person came to the Friend's door
and knocked.
"Who's there?"
"It's me."
The Friend answered, "Go away. There's no place
for raw meat at this table."

The individual went wandering for a year.
Nothing but the fire of separation
can change hypocrisy and ego. The person returned
completely cooked,
walked up and down in front of the Friend's house,
gently knocked.
"Who is it?"
"You."
"Please come in, my self,
there's no place in this house for two.
The doubled end of the thread is not what goes through
the eye of the needle.
It's a single-pointed, fined-down, thread end,
not a big ego-beast with baggage."

-Rumi
Translator: Barks