Your beginning and your end

"I am only the house of your beloved,

not the beloved herself:

true love is for the treasure,

not for the coffer that contains it."

The real beloved is that one who is unique,

who is your beginning and your end.

When you find that one,

you'll no longer expect anything else:

that one is both the manifest and the mystery.

That one is the lord of the states of feeling,

dependent on none:

month and year are slaves to that moon.

When He bids the "state,"

it does His bidding;

when that one wills, bodies become spirit.

Mathnawi III: 1417-1421 

Version by Camille and Kabir Helminski

"Rumi: Jewels of Remembrance"

Threshold Books, 1996