Rumi: the book of love: poems of ecstasy and longing

The way the soul is with the senses and the intellect is like a creek.
When desire weeds grow thick,
intelligence can’t flow,
and soul creatures stay hidden.

Love with no object, conversation with no subject, seeing with no image, light on light, pure possibility

Notice how each particle moves.

Notice how everyone has just arrived here

from a journey. Notice how each wants

a different food. Notice how

the stars vanish as the sun comes up,

and how all streams stream toward the ocean.

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Look at the chefs preparing special plates

for everyone according to what they need.

Look at this cup that can hold the ocean.

Look at those who see the face. Look

through Shams’s eyes into water

that is entirely jewels.

In your light I learn how to love.

In your beauty, how to make poems.

You dance inside my chest

where no one sees you,

but sometimes I do,

and that sight becomes this art.

your light I learn how to love.

In your beauty, how to make poems.

You dance inside my chest

where no one sees you,

but sometimes I do,

and that sight becomes this art.

Look inside and find where a person

loves from. That’s the reality,

not what they say.

have five things to say,

five fingers to give into your grace.

First, when I was apart from you,

this world did not exist, nor any other.

Second, whatever I was looking for

was always you.

Third, why did I ever learn to count to three?

Fourth, my cornfield is burning!

Fifth, this finger stands for Rabia,8

and this is for someone else.

Is there a difference?

Fall in love in such a way that it frees you from any connecting

Birds make great sky-circles
of their freedom.
How do they learn that?
They fall, and falling,
they’re given wings.