Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Rumi's "wedding night"


It is December 17, the date Rumi lovers call his wedding night, for it is when he went to join the Beloved, the day he died in Konya, forever ending the agony of separateness:

A craftsman pulled a reed from the reedbed,
cut holes in it, and called it a human being.

Since then, it has been wailing
a tender agony of parting,
never mentioning the skill
that gave it life as a flute.


The earth is frozen around me, feeling as if Life has gone. But Rumi's call is always to that inner heat that brings spring to the spirit.

Outside, the freezing desert night.
This other night inside grows warm, kindling.
Let the landscape be covered with thorny crust.
We have a soft garden in here.
The continents blasted,
cities and little towns, everything
become a scorched, blackened ball.

The news we hear is full of grief for that future,
but the real news inside here
is there's no news at all.

* * *
This is the day and the year of the rose.
The whole garden is opening with laughter.  
Iris whispering to cypress.
The rose is the joy of meeting someone. 
The rose is a world imagination cannot imagine.
A messenger from the orchard where the soul lives.  
A small seed that points to a great rose tree.
Hold its hand and walk like a child.  
A rose is what grows from the work the prophets do.
Full moon, new moon. 
Accept the invitation spring extends,
four birds flying toward a master.  
A rose is all these,
and the silence that closes and sits in the shade, a bud. 

And lest we forget, the cycle goes back the other way, too. The full moon becomes less. The flower opens so far that it falls, petal by petal, becoming the ground. If there's one thing Rumi's taught me, it is that when one thing comes, its seeming opposite is also right there coming behind. The wise man followed by the fool, crying followed by laughter. There is an ocean, and all of experience is in it, all different ways of knowing God. We're in a river flowing toward it.

My worst habit is I get so tired of winter
I become a torture to those I'm with.

If you are not here, nothing grows.
I lack clarity. My words
tangle and knot up.

How to cure bad water? Send it back to the river.
How to cure bad habits? Send me back to you.

When water gets caught in habitual whirlpools,
dig a way out through the bottom
to the ocean. There is a secret medicine
given only to those who hurt so hard
they can't hope.

The hopers would feel slighted if they knew.

Look as long as you can at the friend you love,
no matter whether that friend is moving away from you
or coming back toward you.

Another year closes, just one of our inept categories, like insufficient words to express the mystery we follow. Truly, every next moment begins a new year. Go back to the river. Start flowing again.

Maybe this is one reason I love winter: It feels like a clean page.

— all Rumi translated by Coleman Barks




12 comments:

  1. Every year, this week Inge and I meet, sit on our Konya carpet, drink tea, and read or listen to Rumi. There are many beautiful readings by Coleman Barks. I have come to associate Rumi's voice with his. Here is one I love, one of the sublime renditions by D.J. Kadajian, which I have shared before.

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  2. Hi Ruth,

    These Rumi passages are so filled with wisdom and hope, and your accompanying words say just enough to make them even more vibrant. I am so grateful for them, as they've carved for me a little sanctuary to hide out in this morning.

    Winter blessings!

    :)

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  3. A wonderful dance here between you and Rumi. All of these words conspire to inspire on a day when inspiration is especially welcomed.

    I especially love your discussion of "when one thing comes, its seeming opposite is also right there coming behind." This is part of the great rhythm of life, the inevitable ebb and flow of things that provides meaning to every moment. It reminds me a great deal of Emerson's essay on "Compensation," the notion that everything that happens is offset by something else, that some element of "bad" always flows from every "good" thing, as some element of "good" always flows from every "bad" thing.'

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  4. 'If there's one thing Rumi's taught me, it is that when one thing comes, its seeming opposite is also right there coming behind. The wise man followed by the fool, crying followed by laughter. There is an ocean, and all of experience is in it, all different ways of knowing God. We're in a river flowing toward it.'

    This, the Rumi poems, all beautiful.

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  5. And so, always two sides to the same coin...maybe the double-edged blade? It does give one pause, dear sister. I love how you've woven this....

    BTW, if I sit far enough back from the laptop to view your thumbnail profile, I see Mom! See you later today on Skype.

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  6. i especially like the first rumi you've posted, how we hear our lament over and over again but forget (too often) that the lament is music. otherwise what might there be? how any song without the holes?

    i cast myself toward the white page day after day and fail to meet it. always my shadow. and so i cast myself again toward it. what is this perverse hope inside of us that would have us meet the white page in whiteness? it would be our own obliteration. but our hope exists beyond self, doesn't it? and so i hope. and so i cast. and so i fail. and so i try again until one day i will meet it successfully. it is a sad journey ripe with the most pervasive of pains, pungent, aching, as though i were a woman lying beside a pond but the pond is not a pond but a wound in the landscape of being. i dip my hand and turn what is inside. i see the world in reflection and i see myself too, although distorted by the wake. these are sad and tender times, difficult. i love them, but they are not easy:)))

    xo
    erin

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  7. Ah, beautiful Rumi. Thank you, and for your perfect commentary.
    Happy winter, Ruth.

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  8. I have a question for you. I am blogging and wanted to post some of Rumi's works, but I want to make sure I can do so. Did you request permissions from HarperCollins, or did you just attribute the works?

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  9. I have a question for you. I am blogging and wanted to post some of Rumi's works, but I want to make sure I can do so. Did you request permissions from HarperCollins, or did you just attribute the works?

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  10. Hello Ruth,

    Rumi is incredible.

    I have a quick question for you. I am blogging and wanted to post some of the poems translated by Coleman Barks. Did you have to get permission from HaperCollins to post them online?

    All the best,

    Greg

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  11. Gregory, I did not request permission from HarperCollins here or for the Rumi Days blog. I don't think you need to for Rumi, since I don't think anyone "owns" his copyright, though HP probably could have taken me to task for reproducing their book. They never did.

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  12. Ruth, I wanted to make sure that a good precedence existed, and it does. So, thank you very much!

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All responses are welcome.