Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Rumi

Don’t grieve,
anything you lose comes round in another form.
The child weaned from mother’s milk
now drinks wine and honey mixed.

God’s joy moves
from unmarked box to unmarked box,
from cell to cell.

As rainwater, down into a flowerbed.
as a rose, up from the ground.
Now it looks like a plate of rice and fish,
now a cliff covered with vines,
now a horse being saddled.

It hides within these,
until one day it cracks them open.


Translated by: Coleman Barks

Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Rumi

Don’t grieve,
anything you lose comes round in another form.
The child weaned from mother’s milk
now drinks wine and honey mixed.

God’s joy moves
from unmarked box to unmarked box,
from cell to cell.

As rainwater, down into a flowerbed.
as a rose, up from the ground.
Now it looks like a plate of rice and fish,
now a cliff covered with vines,
now a horse being saddled.

It hides within these,
until one day it cracks them open.


Translated by: Coleman Barks