This is a lovely poem by Rumi I got from a dear friend:
"the wolf is my shepherd,"
The Sea boils with passion for you
The clouds pour pearls at your feet
A lightning from your love has pierced the earth
This smoke curling to heaven is its child.
We were green: we ripened and grew golden.
The Sea terrified us: we learned how to drown.
Squat and earthbound, we unfolded huge wings.
We started sober: are love’s startled drunkards.
You hide me in your cloak of nothingness
Reflect my ghost in your glass of being
I am nothing, yet appear: transparent dream
Where your eternity briefly trembles.
This love sacrifices all souls, however wise, however “awakened”
Cuts off their heads without a sword,
hangs them without a scaffold.
We are the guests of the one who devours his guests
The friends of the one who slaughters his friends....
Although by his gaze he brings death to so many lovers
Let yourself be killed by him: is he not the water of life?
Never, ever, grow bitter: he is the friend and kills gently.
Keep your heart noble, for this most noble love
Kills only kings near God and men free from passion.
We are like the night, earth’s shadow.
He is the Sun: He splits open the night
with a sword soaked in dawn....
The man to whom is unveiled the mystery of Love
Exists no longer, but vanishes into love.
Place before the Sun a burning candle
And watch its brilliance disappear before that blaze,
The candle exists no longer, it is transformed into Light,
There are no more signs of it, it itself becomes sign....
You are my soul, my universe:
what do I have to do with the soul and the universe?
For me you are ever-flowing treasure:
what do I have to do with profit and loss?
One minute, I am the friend of the wine,
another the friend of him who burns me.
I have come to this age of ruins,
so what do I have to do with time’s melodrama?
I am terrified by the whole world,
I am sprung free of the whole world,
I am neither “hidden” no “apparent.”
What do I have to do with existence or space?
I am drunk on union with you,
I need and want and care about no one else.
Since I am your prey, what do I care
about fate’s bow and its arrows?
I live at the bottom of the stream,
why would I go looking for water?
What could or would I say about this stream that flows and flows?
I have given up existence,
why go on staggering under the burden of this mountain?
Since the wolf is my shepherd,
why put up with the pretensions of the shepherd?
What abandon! What drunkenness!
You hold the cup in you hand
Blessed is the place you are,
and glorious to the eye of the heart.
Each atom, by your grace, is a universe,
each drop of water a soul.
No one who has ever had a sign from you
need worry again about “name” or “sign.”
To find the place of splendor,
at the bottom of the Sea of truths
You have to dive, dive head first:
what do I have to do with feet that scurry?
With the sword of the One God you have hacked a Path for us:
You have stolen all my clothes:
What will I give to the toll-man?
From your beauty ablaze like the sun,
from the curls of your hair,
My heart has become ecstatic:
O my soul, hand me this brimming cup,
Do not weigh pain and misery,
contemplate love, contemplate friendship:
Do not mull over tyranny and neglect:
think of all those who have their eyes fixed on you.
Surname all grief ‘grace’:
transmute pain and anguish into joy
And ask from joy all happiness, all security, all peace.
Demand that security, that peace, demand them,
Choose the company of those withdrawn in love
Rumi
Namaste
Roshi
