With this burning heart, how can I tell you what I see?
Go ask my tears, for they are honest and without sin.
translated by Thomas Rain Crowe
Persian poet
from The Sunrise Ruby by Rumi
Keep knocking, and the joy inside
will eventually open a window
and look out to see who’s there.
translated by Coleman Barks & John Moyne
Where Everything Is Music by Rumi
Don’t worry about saving these songs!
And if one of our instruments breaks,
it doesn’t matter.
We have fallen into the place
where everything is music.
The strumming and the flute notes
rise into the atmosphere,
and even if the world’s harp
should burn up, there will still be
hidden instruments playing.
So the candle flickers and goes out.
We have a piece of flint, and a spark.
This singing art is sea foam.
The graceful movements come from a pearl
somewhere on the ocean floor.
Poems reach up like spindrift and the edge
of driftwood along the beach, wanting!
They derive
from a slow and powerful root
that we can’t see.
Stop the words now.
Open the window in the center of your chest,
and let the spirits fly in and out.
translated by Coleman Barks with John Moyne
from Music Master by Rumi
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.
I want to hold you close like a lute,
so we can cry out with loving.
You would rather throw stones at a mirror?
I am your mirror, and here are the stones.
translated by Coleman Barks with John Moyne
from Bouyancy by Rumi
To praise is to praise
how one surrenders
to the emptiness.
To praise the sun is to praise your own eyes.
Praise, the ocean. What we say, a little ship.
So the sea-journey goes on, and who knows where!
Just to be held by the ocean is the best luck
we could have. It’s a total waking up!
translated by Coleman Barks with John Moyne
untitled poem by Rumi
Listen to presences inside poems,
Let them take you where they will.
Follow those private hints,
and never leave the premises.
translated by Coleman Barks with John Moyne
from Each Note by Rumi
God picks up the reed-flute world and blows.
Each note is a need coming through one of us,
a passion, a longing-pain.
Remember the lips
where the wind-breath originated,
and let your note be clear.
Don’t try to end it.
Be your note.
I’ll show you how it’s enough.
Go up on the roof at night
in this city of the soul.
Let everyone climb on their roofs
and sing their notes.
Sing loud!
translated by Coleman Barks with John Moyne
Leonard Durso 