Look! This is love -- to fly toward the heavens, To tear a hundred veils in every wink, To tear a hundred veils at the beginning, To travel in the end without a foot, And to regard this world as something hidden And not to see with one's own seeing eye! I said: "O heart, may it for you be blessed To enter in the circle of the lovers, To look from far beyond the range of eyesight, To wander in the corners of the bosom! O soul, from where has come to you this new breath? O heart, from where has come this heavy throbbing? O bird, speak now the language of the birds Because I know to understand your secret!" The soul replied: "Know, I was in God's workshop While He still baked the house of clay and water. I fled from yonder workshop at a moment Before the workshop was made and created. I could resist no more. They dragged me hither And they began to shape me like a ball! Translation by Annemarie Schimmel Look! This is Love: Poems of Rumi Shambhala, April 1996
This is love: to fly to heaven, every moment to rend a hundred
veils;
At first instance, to break away from breath -- first step, to
renounce feet;
To disregard this world, to see only that which you yourself
have seen*.
I said, "Heart, congratulations on entering the circle of lovers,
"On gazing beyond the range of the eye, on running into the
alley of the breasts."
Whence came this breath, O heart? Whence came this
throbbing, O heart?
Bird, speak the tongue of birds: I can heed your cipher!
The heart said, "I was in the factory whilst the home of water
and clay was abaking.
"I was flying from the workshop whilst the workshop was
being created.
"When I could no more resist, they dragged me; how shall I
tell the manner of that dragging?"
* "to see only that which you yourself have seen" -- Nicholson's
version is "(not to see your own eye) whence all objects derive
their unreal existence."
Translation by A.J. Arberry
Mystical Poems of Rumi, 1
University of Chicago Press, March 1974
Ghazal 2523
my dear heart you're a fire worshiper an explosive in flame call on the cupbearer to sprinkle the wine on you to soothe your burn with water that special cupbearer the same one who sizzles lives with wine and lips with kisses the one who first calmed my mind gave me a cup of fiery wine and took me to a secret house in that special house dwelled a precious sweetheart who offered me a choice a tray full of gold a tray full of flame a few words i was told this gold is soaked with fire this fire is filled with gold if you choose fire you'll end up with gold if you choose the burden of gold you'll lay heavy and cold take the fire of the beloved and leap with joy Translated by Nader Khalili Rumi, Fountain of Fire Cal-Earth, September 1994
Fire-worshipping heart of mine who spins like a ball in the fire*,
say to the Saqi, "Quick now, a glass of lees to begin with!"
Come, lip-biting Saqi, cook with wine and raw ones; bravo,
garden and orchard of vine from which you pressed the grapes!
I will give a hint no one gives; the hint is this, O fair of
stature, that on that night you transported me unselfed, you com-
mitted me to that moonface of mine.
You, reason, do you remember how, when the king of reason
out of love bestowed that fiery wine on me, at the first breath
you died?
That darling brought two dishes, one of fire, one full of gold;
if you take gold, it becomes fire, and if you set on fire, you win
the game.
See the proud Saqi! Extinguish that pretty fire! What do you
know of the power of fire, for there you are a little child?
Get out of the fire, you will rise happy out of Shams-al-din
Tabrizi; and if you flee into the gold, like gold you will have
congealed.
* Perhaps a better translation is,
"... who burns like sulphur in a fire".
Translation by A.J. Arberry
Mystical Poems of Rumi, 2
University of Chicago Press, September 1991