The poetry of Rumi

You breathe; new shapes appear,
and the music of a desire as widespread as Spring
begins to move like a great wagon.
Drive slowly.
Some of us walking alongside
are lame!

**

I have lived on the lip
of insanity, wanting to know reasons,
knocking on a door. It opens.
I've been knocking from the inside.

**

This that is tormented and very tired,
tortured with restraints like a madman,
this heart.
Still you keep breaking the shell
to get the taste of its kernel!

**

They wonder about you; are you spiritual or sexual?
In the garden of the world they say there's a soul.
In the body of the world they say there's a soul, and you are there.
But we have ways within each other that will never be said by anyone.

**

When I'm with you we stay up all night.
When you're not here I cannot sleep.
Thank God for these two insomnias,
And the difference between them.

**

We are the mirror as well as the face in it.
We are tasting the taste this minute of eternity.
We are pain and what cures pain, both.
We are the sweet cold water and the jar that pours.

**

Love opens my chest, and thought
returns to its confines.
Patience and rational considerations leave.
Only passion stays, whimpering and feverish.
Love is the reality,
and poetry is the drum that calls us to that.

**

Out beyond idea 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.

**

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.

**

I would love to kiss you.
The price of kissing is your life.
Now my loving is running toward my life, shouting,
What a bargain, lets buy it!

**

The wakened lover speaks directly to the beloved,
"You are the sky my spirit circles in,
the love inside love, the resurrection-place.
Let this window be your ear.
I have lost consciousness many times
with longing for your listening silence,
and your life-quickening smile."

**

Again the season of Spring has come
and a spring-source rises under everything,
a moon sliding from the shadows.
Many things must be left unsaid, because its late,
but whatever conversation we haven't had tonite,
we will have tomorrow.

**