Rumi's Page

How Attraction Happens

by Rumi     

Moses is talking to someone drunk with worshiping the golden calf.

 "What happened to your doubt?
You used to be so skeptical of me. The Red Sea parted.
Food came every day in the wilderness for forty years.
A fountain sprang out of a rock.
You saw these things and still reject the idea of prophet hood.

Then the  magician Samiri does a trick to make the metal cow low, and immediately you kneel!

 What did that hollow statue say?

Have you  heard a dullness like your own?"

This is how attraction happens: people with nothing  they value delight in worthlessness. Someone who thinks there's no meaning or purpose

feels drawn to images of futility. Each moves to be with its own.

The ox does not turn toward a lion.

Wolves have no interest in Joseph, unless to devour him.

But if a wolf is cured of wolfishness, it will sleep close by Joseph, like a dog in the presence of meditators.

Soul companionship gives safety and light to a cave full of friends.

Mathnawi II: 2036-58
Version by Coleman Barks
"The Soul of Rumi"
Harper SanFrancisco, 2001

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Like a mirror my soul displays secrets
by Rumi
 
This mirror inside me shows . . .
I can't say what, but I can't not know!

I run from body.  I run from spirit.
I do not belong anywhere.

I'm not alive!
You smell the decay?

You talk about my craziness.
Listen rather to the honed-blade sanity I say.

This gourd head on top of a dervish robe, do I look like someone you know?

This dipper gourd full of liquid, upside-down and not spilling a drop!

Or if it spills, it drops into God and rounds into pearls.

I form a cloud over that ocean and gather spillings.

When Shams is here, I rain.

After a day or two, lilies sprout, the shape of my tongue.

Version by Coleman Barks
"The Essential Rumi"
HarperSanFrancisco, 1995

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Inside me reflecting mirrors,
Reflecting me beyond mincing
Words, not beyond what I know!

Apart from my changing body.
Apart from my invisible spirit
I am a stranger in the ocean
Of my being with no identity.

I am not living, can you sniff
The stink of sludge and decay?

You talk in whispers of my madness.
But look beyond my babbling science
To the asylum of truth, I want to say.

Look at me with my containing head
Topping my dervish cloak, do I remind
You of someone you think you know?
This container holds upside-down with
Swelling joy, a liquid not spilling a drop!
If a precious drop escapes, it falls to God
Becomes fixed like the lacquer of pearls.

I grow like a cloud over that ocean of
Liquid absorbing the vapour into myself.
When the radiance of Shams shines on
me I grow heavy and rich with longing.
And I rain.  Then it's spring time and slender
Lilies rise up like the shape of my tongue.

Interpretive translation by Raficq Abdulla
"Words of Paradise"
Viking Studio, 2000

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     Like a mirror my soul displays secrets; I am not able to speak; but I am unable not to know.
     I have become a fugitive from the body, fearful as to the  spirit; I swear I know not -- I belong neither to this nor to that.      Seeker, to catch a scent is the condition of dying; look not upon me as living, for I am not so.
     Look not on my crookedness, but behold this straight word;  my talk is an arrow, and I am as a bow.
     This gourd like head on top of me, and this dervish habit of my body -- whom am I like, whom am I like in this market of the world?
     Then this gourd on my head, full of liquor -- I keep it upside down, yet I do not let a drop trickle from it.
     And even if I do not let trickle, do you behold the power of God, that in exchange for that drop I gather pearls from the ea.
     My eyes like a cloud gather pearls from that sea; this cloud of my spirit rises to the heaven of fidelity.
     I rain in the presence of Shams al-Haqq-i Tabriz, that lilies may grow in the form of my tongue.    

Translation by A. J. Arberry
"Mystical Poems of Rumi 1"
The University of Chicago Press, 1968