My Friend, I offer You my life.

O my Beloved!
Take me,
Liberate my soul,
Fill me with your love,
and release me from both worlds.

If I set my heart
On anything but you,
O fire, burn me from inside!

O my Beloved
Take away what I want,
Take away what I do,
Take away everything
that takes me from you.

Version by Jonathan Star and Shahram Shiva
A Garden Beyond Paradise
Bantam Books, 1992

 take me in my love
take my soul
set me on ecstasy
take both of my worlds
if I rest my heart on
anything but you
throw me with fireball
take everything I hold

Translation by Nader Khalili
Rumi, Dancing the Flame
Cal-Earth Press, 2001
 

 My Friend,
I offer You my life.
Accept me, make me drunk
and save me from both worlds.
Set me on fire
if my heart settles on anything
but You.

Translation by Azima Melita Kolin and Maryam Mafi
Rumi: Whispers of the Beloved
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, 1999

The two parties He made

No Opposite, Without its Own Opposite
 

The Forgiving God desired and decided in
eternity to reveal and manifest Himself.

But no opposite can be displayed without its
own opposite, and that peerless King had no opposite.

So He made a vicegerent, a Possessor of the
Heart, to be the mirror of His Kingship.

Then He gave him limitless purity, and
produced his opposite from darkness.

He made two banners, white and black:

The one was Adam, the other the satan of His way.
 

Then the strife and war that came to pass
between these two great camps came to pass.

In a similar manner, Abel came in the second period: 

Opposed to his pure light was Cain. . . .

Period after period, generation after generation, 

the two parties have continued to war.

Mathnawi VI: 2151-57, 62
Translation by William C. Chittick
"The Sufi Path of Love"
SUNY Press, Albany, 1983

There is no room

I am filled with you.
Skin, blood, bone, brain and soul.
There's no room for lack of trust, or trust.
Nothing in this existence but that existence.

Version by Coleman Barks
Unseen Rain
Threshold Books, 1986



in my heart
inside and out
is all beloved
in my body
blood and veins
is none but beloved
how can there by any
room for religion
or Godlessness in me
since my existence
is overflowing
with beloved

Translation by Nader Khalili
"Dancing the Flame"
Cal-Earth, 2001