The Essential Rumi

  With God. Go, offer words to that empty sky—

  Who the hell are you that He should reply?

  THE KNOWLEDGE

  From father to son it passes, my friend, the belief –

  Learn now its value or come elsewhere to grief.

  FLEAS

  Don’t burn the blanket infested with a single flea

  Don’t turn away from the human who is as flawed as

  thee.

  THE DUMB CAN SPEAK

  The word of the Book can be spoken by the dumb

  Say in your heart, “When the help of God shall come.”

  MIRRORS

  The Prophet said the faithful are mirrors to each other

  You in subjugation are no better than your brother

  To seek solace in humankind

  is the way of fools

  Earthly loves,

  are shattered mirrors,

  Or are but mangled tools.

  KINSHIP

  To speak the same language is one form of kin

  Yet that which unites is the language within

  One Turk and the other may share the same tongue

  Do they hear the same music when the heart’s song

  is sung?

  TONGUE

  Your tongue, O rambling friend,

  Can make heaven on earth its double

  And yet your tongue, O Rumi,

  Is the fount of all your trouble!

  SOLOMON AND SHEBA

  Sheba knew that King Solomon was

  Fated for her virgin bed because

  The marriage between wealth and wisdom would

  Conspire to bequeath the world the good

  Which both their realms in troubled times desired.

  Besides which she was awesomely inspired

  By what she heard of his inventive wit

  And charm and strength. She knew she wanted it.

  She sent him forty mules loaded with bricks

  Of gold and a ring wound in a helix

  But when this mule train reached Solomon’s realm

  They saw a plain of gold spread before them.

  So on and on they walked for forty days

  Shielding their eyes from its reflected rays

  And thinking “Where the hell have we been sent?

  This gold is but this kingdom’s fundament!

  We may as well have brought a pile of dust

  To Solomon.” The intelligent must

  Reconsider their intelligence

  Which may be commoner than common sense.

  But Solomon was mildly amused

  His wise reply was subtly interfused

  With sarcasm. “Why do you bring me gifts?

  Observe instead the loving hand that shifts

  The planets and the stars and moves the sun

  O leave your gold, unite me with the One

  Who created every moving galaxy

  And gave us light so that our eyes might see.”

  Then Solomon sent Sheba’s servants back

  To tell their queen of gold he had no lack

  In a land which was constructed of the stuff

  And though rejection may seem a bit rough

  A little thought would help her understand

  That he was merely trying to lend a hand

  To lead her from the vanity of thrones

  Out of this vale of tears and sighs and groans

  To where the wandering Ibrahim did find

  The peace of that which resides in the mind

  The light that Yusuf found when he emerged

  And found the darkness of his hell was purged

  By revelation. Though it may sound strange

  O Queen, embrace the alchemy of change!

  USE WHAT HE HAS GRANTED YOU

  Use what He has granted you, my friend

  While shafts exist the bow must not unbend

  His word is sharp and always hits the spot

  Unlike the quibbles “if,” “maybe” and “what!”

  He is the sunlight slicing through the dark

  He is the silence of the twilit park

  The body is but that which must endure

  And love is what we must be grateful for

  Laughter is the caged beast in your breast

  Unleash it now before you go to rest

  I want to be surrounded by your love

  As a hand is covered by a fitting glove

  Does love infest your soul and every sense?

  The colours of the world are evidence

  Of divine waters, divine time and space

  Reflected in the lines of Shams’s face.

  DOUBT

  You are the thoughts that sowed my mind with doubt

  You are the secret longing to get out.

  LIKE THIS

  How does the longing turn itself to bliss?

  Raise your eyes and smile and say: “Like this!”

  The song of love, the story of a kiss

  Is easy to recount; it’s just like this!

  All souls return, O sceptic don’t dismiss

  The fact that I can return home: like this!

  Don’t ever stoop to sniff out the spirit

  Whose scent is beyond sense and human wit

  Just lean forward, let’s be cheek to cheek

  You will have found the fragrance that you seek.

  If someone asks how Issah raised the dead

  There is no answer. Nothing I have read

  Can tell me how it’s done, but I know this

  The closest explanation, is a kiss

  The pain of passion is akin to fire

  Loving leaves me with traces of desire

  The crack that rents and stills a broken heart

  Is that which forces heaven’s doors apart.

  SCIENCE

  Trees are rooted in the ground,

  They fear

  The sound of sawing wood

  —It draws near

  They are the prey of every

  saw-toothed will

  Because they draw their life

  by standing still

  The Tigris and Euphrates

  would be,

  Without their flow, as salty

  as the sea.

  And both the sun and moon give

  out their light

  As sparks in the machine of day

  and night

  The air that’s trapped in caverns

  becomes stale

  How different from the breeze that

  fills a sail!

  So movement is the law –

  The law that rules the skies

  Issah caused the dead to

  cast off their shrouds and rise

  by breathing into dust a living soul

  saying, ‘Rise, your faith had made thee whole!’

  Signs and symbols

  stories I recall,

  should lead you on a journey

  That is all!

  LOVE IS ALL

  Love is all there is and that’s not new

  I’ve heard that all my life—and so have you

  But love is also that which guarantees

  That you pass through heaven’s doors with ease

  So what then is this “love?” My heart be still!

  What more is it than melting of the will

  Into the will of that which can’t be known?

  Or snared in mental traps? That bird has flown

  Beyond the clouds of knowing. Now submit!

  If there’s a truth on earth, this is it.

  *

  Love is that which makes the bitter sweet

  Love is that which charms a leaden sheet

  Into a solid plate of gold. Love can

  Heal a wound and cure the ailing man

  Love can be kind or harsh, it can expose

  The cruel thorn pretending it’s a rose

  Love, the acid that can smelt a stone

  It is the spell that makes the sun postpone
>
  Its tryst with dawn. It can delay the light

  And grant the lovers that much more of night

  Through love the healer resurrects the dead

  And bids Sofia to walk with her bed

  I had to bring the healer Issah in

  God’s love sent him to forgive all sin

  Embrace God’s love and come to Him alone

  —And make the scaffold of this world

  Your throne.

  *

  Love knows no king, no slave, no thief, no saint

  Love grabs the worst and best without restraint

  Love bears us up to answer heaven’s call

  Would you have guessed he summons

  one and all?

  VOICES

  All prophets are but windows to the light

  You can’t say one was wrong and one was right

  They are the same, their message is but one

  To crave the light, is to accept the sun.

  POURING RAIN

  Receive his wisdom like the pouring rain

  Its source is endless but like harvest grain

  It has its season. Though you’ll only get

  As much as you deserve of it—and yet

  He has in store an infinite supply

  Available to every passerby

  He measures out the wisdom he will dole

  In accord with the measure of your bowl.

  SAMARITANS

  To those who cry for help

  The Samaritan will come

  Drawn to the sound. God knows

  There are some

  Who seek to help where

  It isn’t needed.

  Their awareness of need

  Has superseded

  Restraint and caution,

  Your desire to please

  To diagnose and cure

  Means you know the disease.

  Or the law that makes

  water flow from high to low,

  It is absurd to ask,

  “How does the water know?

  In which direction

  It must start?”

  Let the music of the spheres

  Speak to your heart!

  Brush the hair

  That falls over your eyes

  Unchain your feet

  Let them walk the skies

  The ecstasy will come

  As a mother to a child

  If you let your cry break out

  —pure, heartfelt and wild!

  NASUH

  A man named Nasuh, soft of feature

  Was often mistaken for a female creature

  Satan filled his head with lies

  And promises, and suggested he disguise

  Himself as a woman and find employ

  In the Princess’s bathhouse. O what joy

  He could derive, shampooing the women’s hair

  And massaging their bodies, what rare

  pleasures he would undoubtedly derive

  With a permanent hard, what a way to be alive!

  So Nasuh did just that. He spent his days

  In lustful heaven, to Satan be praise!

  Except that soon he heard the voice of his own guilt

  Which whispered, “Nasuh you are damned, you built

  Your pleasure dome on quicksand, it could sink

  If you are caught and executed. Think!”

  And foreswear Satan, shun the horned beast

  Who leads to famine disguised as a feast.

  Hearing this, young Nasuh turned to pray

  Acknowledging that he had lost his way.

  He sought the advice of a Sufi guide

  Who said that men who ran could seldom hide.

  The Sufi said that prayer would intervene

  And show him pleasures he had never seen

  Nasuh, though chastised, felt like a trapped cur.

  Next day the bathhouse was in a mighty stir

  The Princess was missing a pair of pearls

  The suspects were, of course, the bathhouse girls.

  The poor girls were told that they’d be whipped

  If they did not submit, so they were stripped.

  Nasuh was shampooing a lady’s head

  And feasting on this naked female spread

  And losing concentration Nasuh dropped

  The shampoo kettle and his client stopped

  Looking in the mirror and turned round

  And Nasuh knew that he would now be found

  Out and began running towards the door,

  When the head eunuch said, “None can leave the floor!

  Till I say so and you, take off your robe!”

  The game was up, the attendant would probe

  His body and delve every orifice

  The eunuch asked Nasuh, “Now, what’s amiss?”

  The only way out now was to confess

  That he had several times seen the Princess

  Naked as a blossom, from toe to tits

  A crime for which he would be chopped to bits.

  His heart sank as though it were made of stone

  His stomach cramped, he felt very alone

  And just as he surrendered to his fate

  A eunuch shouted, “Found them! God is great!”

  So did he dodge the executioner’s sword?

  And did he drop and give praise to the Lord?

  You bet! He prayed, “I thought my time had come,

  Forgive, forgive . . .” but Nasuh was struck dumb.

  He would forever be downcast, alone

  Knowing only he knows, what he has known.

  DON’T ASK

  My friend

  My fellow traveler

  Don’t ask where I go

  The only logical answer

  Unhelpful and yet not,

  Is that I do not know.

  A pen is

  An instrument

  It doesn’t know how to write

  Does a ball

  Ever know

  The trajectory of its flight?

  The drunk and

  The policeman

  Are characters in this play

  Pieces on a

  Chessboard

  Can only move in a certain way.

  THE WILL TO DROWN

  Desire and your longings will bring you to a fall

  Why fear falling, my friend, isn’t it after all

  Like willing yourself to drown in God and go to

  paradise,

  To a haven under the waters or a garden in the

  skies?

  What ecstasy it is to be pierced by the glance

  The arrow from a lover’s eye, the wound that makes

  you dance,

  O Heart, what difference then, between joy and pain?

  Opposites are identical and logic is in vain.

  LOSE ALL DESIRE

  But for her, your lover wills that you lose all desire

  Love, when at its brightest, seeks to quench the fire

  Dissolution in that love, they say, resembles death,

  Yet it is the paradise where single hearts draw

  breath.

  HOME

  A bird of the rock and sea may come to rest

  And take shelter in a tree-bird’s nest

  And still hear the echoes of shells in her ear

  The music by which the seagulls steer

  So fly from the nest and leave the tree

  Behind. Wing your way to eternity

  Leave Adam trapped in his garden home

  And Issah blessed to walk on the foam.

  BE UNSUBTLE

  O thinker addicted to subtle thoughts

  Adding infinities and subtracting noughts

  Your mind can make angels dance on a pin

  O turn to the thoughtless spirit within!

  BROTHERS

  All brothers should be like grapes on a vine

  Pressed together, yielding their wine

  The ripe ones hide the green ones taste

&n
bsp; Even imperfection doesn’t go to waste.

  SKEPTIC

  O Skeptic who sees nothing in empty space

  Think now of infinity as God’s face

  The images will come if you open your mind

  To His word alone and leave doubt behind.

  The Baptist’s mother came to Mary and said

  You shall bear a Son through whom God will raise

  the dead

  The child and that faith in Mary grew

  And Issah was born to heal me and you.

  EQUALS

  O Muslim, when you stand in the rank of prayer,

  You are the fabric of all others, indivisible as the air

  The Messenger of God has made you as one

  You who were divided, son against son.

  THE WORD IS ALL

  The Holy Book says, “If the sea were to become ink . . .”

  And all feathers quill pens, O mortals, do not think,

  A syllable could be written to displace the Word

  Given to the Messenger and subsequently heard

  By writers and poets whose words must, alas, fade

  Leaving only His Truth which at your feet is laid.

  ON THE JOURNEY

  Follow your Guide, Traveler, don’t trust to the map

  These highways and low ways are prone to mishap

  We all travel down the ways we haven’t been before

  So trust to Him and follow—he’ll take you, door to

  door.

  BE PATIENT

  The child wants the breast at once, it hasn’t learned

  to wait

  Patience is the key to joy, O Traveler, hesitate!

  OPPOSITES

  In seeing darkness, O Rumi, you know the light;

  You know happiness by feeling sorrow’s bite

  All meaning hides, till its opposite is known

  Save God, with no opposite, He is hidden, alone.

  WEAR THE CROWN LIGHTLY

  To wear a crown lightly is to be a king

  Regardless and regarded as the real thing