Seek delicious and sweet company

Don’t sit with a sad person,
Only sit with those who are sweet and kind-hearted.
When you’ve entered a beautiful garden
Why spend your time with the weeds?
Stay with the jasmine and the jonquil.

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

i told you don’t sit around
with unhappy folks
don’t seek the company of any
but those delicious and sweet
when you’re in a garden
make your way
around the thorns
seek the company
of narcissus and jasmine
every flower and more

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

It is what it is

If the thought of sorrow spoils your joy, yet it prepares
you for joy.
Sorrow sweeps the house fiercely, emptying it of
everything, then, coming from the Source of goodness,
a new joy enters.
Sorrow chases away the withered leaves in the heart,
then new green leaves can grow.
Sorrow uproots the previous joy, then a new delight
springs from beyond.

  Mathnawi V, 3678/3681
Translated by Muriel Maufroy
Breathing Truth - Quotations from Jalaluddin Rumi
Sanyar Press - London, 1997

One Day

Your love has filled me
with a madness
no one could ever know.

Your gaze has enchanted my heart
with a poem
no one could ever write.

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

(credit : Khalid Shahin Blog)
 

One day
You will take my heart completely
and make it more fiery than
a dragon.
Your eyelashes will write on my heart
the poem
that could never come from the pen
of a poet.

  Translation by Azima Melita Kolin  and Maryam Mafi
Rumi: Hidden Music
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, 2001