This Torture

This Torture

Why should we tell you our love stories

 when you spill them together like blood in the dirt?

Love is a pearl lost on the ocean floor, 

or a fire we can’t see,

but how does saying that 

push us through the top of the head into

 the light above the head?

Love is not

 an iron pot, so this boiling energy

 won’t help.

Soul, heart, self. 

Beyond and within those

 is one saying,

How long before 

I’m free of this torture!

From The Book of Love

Translated by Coleman Barks

Who Are You

Who Are You

Who are you? The inner vision of consciousness? 

The heart? A sacred half-light, are you that?

Do you grow gatherings? Are you a friend 

of the sun, who comes and goes so quickly?

Do not forget your vertical passage,

 the night of power,

and don’t hide from the one 

for whom all our secrets are down in the pillow under 

his head, doctor of lovers, soul for

 this thick world,

the one who spirals iron

 like dough and makes the body lightedness.

No belief is necessary to enter this tent

 where one love story changes to another.

I remember that with these words brought here

 by a falcon from the wrist of Shams.

From The Book of Love

Translated by Coleman Barks

The Source of Joy

The Source of Joy 

No one knows what makes the soul wake up

 so happy! Maybe a dawn breeze 

has blown the veil from the face of God.

A thousand new moons appear. 

Roses open laughing. 

Hearts become perfect rubies

 like those from Badakshan.

The body turns entirely spirit.

 Leaves become branches in this wind.

Why is it now so easy to surrender, 

even for those already surrendered?

There’s no answer to any of this. 

No one knows the source of joy.

A poet breathes into a reed flute, 

and the tip of every hair makes music.

Shams sails down clods of dirt from the roof, 

and we take jobs as doorkeepers for him. 

From The Book of Love 

Translated by Coleman Barks

You Wreck My Shop

You Wreck My Shop

You wreck my shop and my house and now my heart,

 but how can I run from what gives me life?

I’m weary of personal worrying, in love 

with the art of madness! Tear open my shame

and show the mystery. How much longer 

do I have to fret with self-restraint and fear?

Friends, this is how it is: we are fringe

 sewn inside the lining of a robe. Soon

we’ll be loosened, the binding threads torn out. 

The beloved is a lion. 

We’re the lame deer in his paws. 

Consider what choices we have!

From The Book of Love

Translated by Coleman Barks

Escaping To The Forest

Escaping To The Forest 

Some souls have gotten free of their bodies.

 Do you see them? Open your eyes for those

 who escape to meet with other escapees,

whose hearts associate in a way they have 

of leaving their false selves

 to live in a truer self.

I don’t mind if my companions 

wander away for a while.

They will come back like a smiling drunk. 

The thirsty ones die of their thirst.

The nightingale sometimes flies from a garden

 to sing in the forest.

From The Book of Love

Translated by Coleman Barks

On Resurrection Day

On Resurrection Day 

On Resurrection Day
God will say,
"What did you do
with the strength and the energy
that your food gave you
on Earth?
How did you use your eyes?
What did you make with your five senses
while they were dimming and playing out?
I gave you hands and feet as tools
for preparing the ground for planting.
Did you, in the health I gave,
do the plowing?"
You will not be able to stand
when you hear those questions.
You will bend double with shame,
and finally acknowledge the glory.

Then you will turn to the right looking to the prophets
for help, as though to say,
I am stuck in the mud of my life.
Help me out of this!

And they will answer,
those kings,
"The time for helping is past.
The plow stands there in the field.
You should have used it."
Then you will turn to the left,
where your family is,
and they will say,
"Don't look at us!
This conversation is between you
and your creator!"

From One-Handed Basket Weaving 

Translated by Coleman Barks

This We Have Now

This We Have Now

This we have now 

is not imagination.

This is not grief, 

or joy, not a judging state, 

or an elation, or a sadness.

Those come and go. 

This is the presence 

that doesn’t.

It’s dawn, Husam, 

here in the splendor of coral, 

inside the Friend, in the simple truth

 of what Hallaj said.

What else could human beings want?

When grapes turn to wine,

 they’re wanting this.

When the night sky pours by, 

it’s really a crowd of beggars,

 and they all want some of this.

This we are now 

created the body, cell by cell,

 like bees building a honeycomb.

The human body and the universe 

grew from this, not this 

from the universe and the human body.

From The Book of Love 

Translated by Coleman Barks

A Lover of God

A Lover of God 

Sometimes a lover of God may faint 

in the presence. Then the beloved bends 

and whispers in his ear, “Beggar, 

spread out your robe. I’ll fill it with gold.

I’ve come to protect your consciousness. 

Where has it gone? Come back!”

This fainting is because lovers want so much. 

A chicken invites a camel into her henhouse, 

and the whole structure is demolished.

A rabbit nestles down with its eyes closed 

in the arms of a lion. There is an excess in 

spiritual searching that is profound ignorance.

Let that ignorance be our teacher! 

The Friend breathes into one who has no breath. 

A deep silence revives the listening
of those two who meet on the riverbank.

Like the ground turning green in a spring wind, 

like birdsong beginning inside the egg,

 like this universe coming into existence,

the lover wakes and whirls in a dancing joy, 

then kneels down in praise.

From The Book of Love

Translated by Coleman Barks

Hallaj

Hallaj

Hallaj said what he said and went to the origin

 through the hole in the scaffold.

I cut a cap’s worth of cloth from his robe, 

and it swamped over me head to foot.

Years ago I broke a branch of roses

 from the top of his wall. A thorn from that

 is still in my palm, working deeper.

From Hallaj, I learned to hunt lions, 

but I became something hungrier than a lion.

I was a frisky colt. He broke me 

with a quiet hand on the side of my head.

A person comes to him naked. It’s cold.

 There’s a fur coat floating in the river.

“Jump in and get it,” he says. 

You dive in. You reach for the coat.

 It reaches for you.

It’s a live bear that has fallen in upstream, 

drifting with the current.

“How long does it take!” Hallaj yells from the bank.

 “Don’t wait,” you answer. “This coat

 has decided to wear me home!”

A little part of a story, a hint. 

Do you need long sermons on Hallaj?

From The Book of Love

Translated by Coleman Barks

A Great Wagon

A Great Wagon

When I see your face, the stones start spinning!

 You appear; all studying wanders. 

I lose my place.

Water turns pearly. 

Fire dies down and doesn’t destroy.

In your presence I don’t want what I thought 

I wanted, those three little hanging lamps.

Inside your face the ancient manuscripts

 seem like rusty mirrors. 

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.

From The Book of Love

Translated by Coleman Barks

Laila And The Khalifa

Laila And The Khalifa

The Khalifa said to Laila, "Art thou really she
For whom Majnun lost his head and went distracted?
Thou art not fairer than many other fair ones."
She replied, "Be silent; thou art not Majnun!"


If thou hadst Majnun's eyes,
The two worlds would be within thy view.
Thou art in thy senses, but Majnun is beside himself.
In love to be wide awake is treason.
The more a man is awake, the more he sleeps (to love);
His (critical) wakefulness is worse than slumbering.


Our wakefulness fetters our spirits,
Then our souls are a prey to divers whims,
Thoughts of loss and gain and fears of misery.
They retain not purity, nor dignity, nor lustre,
Nor aspiration to soar heavenwards.
That one is really sleeping who hankers after each whim
And holds parley with each fancy.

From The Book of Love

Translated by Coleman Barks

Not Here

Not Here

There's courage involved if you want
to become truth. 

There is a broken- open place in a lover. 


Where are those qualities of bravery and
sharp compassion in this group?  What's the
use of old and frozen thought? 

I want a howling hurt.  This is not a treasury
where gold is stored; this is for copper.


We alchemists look for talent that
can heat up and change. 


Lukewarm won't do. Halfhearted holding back,
well-enough getting by?  Not here.

From The Translation of Rumi

by Coleman Barks

The Self We Share

 The Self We Share

Thirst is angry with water. Hunger bitter
with bread.

The cave wants nothing to do with the sun.


This is dumb, the self- defeating way
we've been.

A gold mine is calling us into its temple.
Instead, we bend and keep picking up rocks
from the ground.

Every thing has a shine like gold,
but we should turn to the source!

The origin is what we truly are. I add a little
vinegar to the honey I give.

The bite of scolding makes ecstasy more familiar.

But look, fish, you're already in the ocean:
just swimming there makes you friends with
glory.

What are these grudges about? You are Benjamin.
Joseph has put a gold cup in your grain sack and
accused you of being a thief.

Now he draws you aside and says,
"You are my brother. I

am a prayer. You're the amen."

We move in eternal regions, yet
worry about property here.

This is the prayer of each:

You are the source of my life.
You separate essence from mud.

You honor my soul. You bring rivers from the
mountain springs. You brighten my eyes.

The wine you offer takes me out of myself into
the self we share. Doing that is religion.

From Teaching Stories of Rumi

Translated by Coleman Barks

Shadow And Light

Shadow And Light 

How does a part of the world leave the world?
How does wetness leave water?

Dont' try to put out fire by throwing on
more fire! Don't wash a wound with blood.

No matter how fast you run, your shadow
keeps up. Sometimes it's in front!

Only full overhead sun diminishes your shadow.
But that shadow has been serving you.

What hurts you, blesses you. Darkness is
your candle. Your boundaries are your quest.


I could explain this, but it will break the
glass cover on your heart, and there's no
fixing that.

You must have shadow and light source both.
Listen, and lay your head under the tree of awe.

When from that tree feathers and wings sprout on you,
be quieter than a dove. Don't even open your mouth for
even a coo.

From The Translation of Rumi

by Coleman Barks

Don't Listen To Anything I Say

Don't Listen To Anything I Say 

Don’t listen to anything I say.

 I must enter the center of the fire.

Fire is my child, but I must 

be consumed and become fire.

Why is there crackling and smoke? 

Because the firewood and the flames 

are still talking about each other.

“You are too dense. Go away!”

“You are too wavering.

 I have solid form.”

In the blackness those friends keep arguing. 

Like a wanderer with no face. 

Like the most powerful bird in existence

 sitting on its perch, refusing to move.

From The Book of Love

Translated by Coleman Barks

Whoever Brought Me Here

Whoever Brought Me Here

All day I think about it, then at night I say it.
Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing?
I have no idea.
My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that,
and I intend to end up there.

This drunkenness began in some other tavern.
When I get back around to that place,
I'll be completely sober. Meanwhile,
I'm like a bird from another continent, sitting in this aviary.
The day is coming when I fly off,
but who is it now in my ear who hears my voice?
Who says words with my mouth?

Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul?
I cannot stop asking.
If I could taste one sip of an answer,
I could break out of this prison for drunks.
I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way.
Whoever brought me here, will have to take me home.

This poetry. I never know what I'm going to say.
I don't plan it.
When I'm outside the saying of it,
I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.

From The Essential Rumi

Translated by Coleman Barks

Time To Go Home

Time To 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 go 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.

From Open Secret 

Translated by Coleman Barks

Lovers

Lovers

Lovers think they are looking for each other,
but there is 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 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.

From The Essential Rumi

Translated by Coleman Barks with John Moyne

Desire And The Importance of Failing

Desire And The Importance of Failing

A window opens.
A curtain pulls back.

The lamp of lovers connect,
not at their ceramic bases,
but in their lightedness.

No lover wants union with the Beloved
without the Beloved also wanting the lover.

Love makes the lover weak,
while the Beloved gets strong.

Lightning from here strikes there.
When you begin to love God, God
is loving you. A clapping sound
does not come from one hand.

A thirsty man calls out, 'Delicious water,
where are you?' while the water moans,
'Where is the water drinker?'

The thirst in our souls is the attraction
put out by the Water itself.

We belong to It,
and It to us.

God's wisdom made us lovers of one another.
In fact, all the particles of the world
are in love and looking for lovers.

Pieces of straw tremble
in the presence of amber.

We tremble like iron filings
welcoming the magnet.

Whatever that Presence gives us
we take in. Earth signs feed.
Water signs wash and freshen.
Air signs clear the atmosphere.
Fire signs jiggle the skillet,
so we cook without getting burnt.

And the Holy Spirit helps with everything,
like a young man trying to support a family.
We, like the man's young wife, stay home,
taking care of the house, nursing the children.

Spirit and matter work together like this,
in a division of labor.

Sweethearts kiss and taste the delight
before they slip into bed and mate.

The desire of each lover is
that the work of the other be perfected.
By this man-and-woman cooperation,
the world gets preserved.
Generation occurs.

Roses and blue arghawan flowers flower.
Night and day meet in a mutual hug.

So different, but they do love each other,
the day and the night, like family.

And without their mutual alternation
we would have no energy.

Every part of the cosmos is draws toward its mate.
The ground keeps talking to the body,
saying, 'Come back! It's better for you
down here where you came from.'

The streamwater calls to the moisture in the body.
The fiery aether whispers to the body's heat,
'I am your origin. Come with me.'
Seventy-two diseases are caused
by the various elements pulling inside the body.
Disease comes, and the organs
fall out of harmony.

We're like four different birds,
that each had one leg tied in
with the other birds.

A flopping bouguet of birds!
Death releases the binding, and they fly off,
but before that, their pulling is our pain.

Consider how the soul must be,
in the midst of these tensions,
feeling its own exalted pull.

My longing is more profound.
The birds want sweet green herbs
and the water running by.

I want the infinite! I want wisdom.
These birds want orchards and meadows
and vines with fruit on them.

I want a vast expansion.
They want profit and security
of having enough food.

Remember what the soul wants,
because in that, eternity
is wanting our souls!

Which is the meaning of the text,
They love That, and That loves them.

If I keep on explaining this,
the Mathnawi will run to eighty volumes!

The gist is: whatever anyone seeks,
that is seeking the seeker.

No matter if its animal,
or vegetable, or mineral.

Every bit of the universe
is filled with wanting,
and whatever any bit wants,
wants the wanter!

This subject must dissolve again.

Back to Sadri Jahan and the uneducated peasant
who loved him, so that gradually Sadri Jahan
loved the lowly man. But who really
attracted who, whoom, Huuuu?

Don't be presumptuous and say one or the other.
Close your lips. The mystery of loving
is God's sweetest secret.

Keep it. Bury it. Leave it here
where I leave it, drawn as I am
by the pull of the Puller
to something else.

You know how it is. Sometimes
we plan a trip to one place,
but something takes us to another.

When a horse is being broken, the trainer
pulls it in many different directions,
so the horse will come to know
what it is to be ridden.

The most beautiful and alert horse is one
completely attuned to the rider.

God fixes a passionate desire in you,
and then disappoints you.
God does that a hundred times!

God breaks the wings of one intention
and then gives you another,
cuts the rope of contriving,
so you'll remember your dependence.

But sometimes your plans work out!
You feel fulfilled and in control.

That's because, if you were always failing,
you might give up. But remember,
it is by failures that lovers
stay aware of how they are loved.

Failure is the key
to the kingdom within.

Your prayer should be, "Break the legs
of what I want to happen. Humiliate
my desire. Eat me like candy.
It's spring and finally
I have no will."

From Feeling The Shoulder of The Lion

Translated by Coleman Barks

(Mathnawi, III, 4391 - 4472)

Birdwings

Birdwings

Your grief for what you've lost lifts a mirror
up to where you are bravely working.

Expecting the worst, you look, and instead,
here's the joyful face you've been wanting to see.

Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.
If it were always a fist or always stretched open,
you would be paralysed.

Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding,
the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated
as birdwings.

From The Essential Rumi

Translated by Coleman Barks with John Moyne