FROM BOX TO BOX
Don't weep.
The joy that has gone
will come round again in another form
Have no doubt about this!
A child's first joy
comes from its mother's milk;
After the child is weaned
his joy comes from drinking sweet wine.
This supreme joy has no resting place
It enters one form then another,
from box to box - an eternal movement
between heaven and earth.
Here it comes, pouring down from the sky,
seeping into the earth,
and rising up again as a bed of roses.
Now it is water, now a plate of rice,
Now the swaying trees, now a horse and rider.
It lies within these forms for awhile
then bursts forth to become something new.
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| (The Mystic's Dream by PinkyPinkee on deviantART) |
Isn't this like our dreams?
The body sleeps
while the soul moves on
to take other forms.
You say,
I dreamt I was a cypress, a bed of tulips,
the blossoms of roses and jasmines.
Then the soul returns, and you wake up
the cypress is gone, the roses are gone.
I tell you truly,
everything you now see
will vanish like a dream.
I do not mean to trouble you, O friend,
with words so bold as these.
Perhaps you will only listen to God.
He speaks more gently than I.
But how will you ever hear Him with
All that blathering going on?
Everyone is speaking about golden bread
yet no one has ever tasted it!
O my soul, where can I find rest
but in the shimmering love of his heart?
Where can I see the pure light of the Sun
but in the eyes of my own Shams-e Tabriz?
Version by Jonathan Star
"A Garden Beyond Paradise: The Mystical Poetry of Rumi"
Bantam Books, 1992
