Rumi - Selected Poems - Jalal Ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Rumi - Selected Poems - Jalal Ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Rumi - Selected Poems - Jalal Ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
The back would please you if you've never seen the face.
It leads to transformation
a thousand times
our victory and defeat is from thee, O thou whose qualities are comely!
because of the wind they are rushing onward from moment to moment.
On the Deathbed
Go, rest your head on a pillow, leave me alone;
Kulliyat-i-Shams 2039
„It is said that after Muhammad and the prophets revelation does not descend upon anyone else. Why not? In fact it does, but then it is
not called 'revelation.' It is what the Prophet referred to when he said, 'The believer sees with the Light of God.' When the believer looks
with 'The believer sees with the Light of God.' When the believer looks with God's Light, he sees all things: the first and the last, the
present and the absent. For how can anything be hidden from God's Light? And if something is hidden, then it is not the Light of God.
Therefore the meaning of revelation exists, even if it is not called revelation.“
Fihi ma fihi [Discourses of Rumi] quoted from William C. Chittick, The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi
we are sweeping the road to the sky. Your joy is here today, what remains for tomorrow?
The armies of the day have chased the army of the night,
Oh! joy for he who has escaped from this world of perfumes and colour!
For beyond these colours and these perfumes, these are other colours in the heart and the soul.
Oh! joy for this soul and this heart who have escaped
Although this water and this clay contain the hearth of the
philosophical stone.
Like the birds of the sea, men come from the ocean – the ocean of the soul.
Like the birds of the sea, men come from the ocean – the ocean of the soul.
How could this bird, born from that sea, make his dwelling here?
No, we are the pearls from the bosom of the sea, it is there that we dwell:
Otherwise how could the wave succeed to the wave that comes from the soul?
The wave named 'Am I not your Lord' has come, it has broken the vessel of the body;
And when the vessel is broken, the vision comes back, and the union with Him.
Eva de Vitray-Meyerovitch, 'Rumi and Sufism' trans. Simone Fattal, Sausalito, CA: Post-Apollo Press, 1977, 1987.
Our Death is our Wedding
Our death is our wedding with eternity.
Fix your eyes on God and do not talk about what is invisible,
The bird of vision is flying towards You with the wings of desire.
as an object of desire,
poverty or emptiness.
The mother and father are your attachment
of living in emptiness.
Non-existence.
Masnavi VI 233
(MI'RAJ according to Islamic tradition is the ascend of Muhammad to heavens from the Al Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem.)
who idly ask, 'How much is that?' Oh, I'm just looking.
in that shop.
like Noah.
I shall be that.
If knowledge of mysteries
illumination of heart.
'Know,' he replied,
of the heart.'
Make yourself free
Make yourself free from self at one stroke!
Be a conoisseur,
as fast as it can.
He Comes
He comes, a moon whose like the sky ne'er saw, awake or dreaming.
But when his image all min eye possessed, a voice descended:
Love's mighty arm from roof to base each dark abode is hewing,
R. A. Nicholson - 'Persian Poems', an Anthology of Verse Translations; edited by A.J. Arberry, Everyman's Library, 1972
R. A. Nicholson - 'Persian Poems', an Anthology of Verse Translations; edited by A.J. Arberry, Everyman's Library, 1972
DEPARTURE
Up, O ye lovers, and away! 'Tis time to leave the world for aye.
Hark, loud and clear from heaven the from of parting calls-let none delay!
The cameleer hat risen a main, made ready all the camel-train,
And quittance now desires to gain: why sleep ye, travellers, I pray?
Behind us and before there swells the din of parting and of bells;
From yonder starry lights, and through those curtain-awnings darkly blue,
Mysterious figures float in view, all strange and secret things display.
From this orb, wheeling round its pole, a wondrous slumber o'er thee stole:
O weary life that weighest naught, O sleep that on my soul dost weigh!
O heart, toward they heart's love wend, and O friend, fly toward the Friend,
R. A. Nicholson - 'Persian Poems', an Anthology of Verse Translations; edited by A.J. Arberry, Everyman's Library, 1972
REMEMBERED MUSIC
'This said, the pipe and lute that charm our ears
R. A. Nicholson - 'Persian Poems', an Anthology of Verse Translations; edited by A.J. Arberry, Everyman's Library, 1972
R. A. Nicholson - 'Persian Poems', an Anthology of Verse Translations; edited by A.J. Arberry, Everyman's Library, 1972
R. A. Nicholson - 'Persian Poems', an Anthology of Verse Translations; edited by A.J. Arberry, Everyman's Library, 1972
R. A. Nicholson - 'Persian Poems', an Anthology of Verse Translations; edited by A.J. Arberry, Everyman's Library, 1972
R. A. Nicholson - 'Persian Poems', an Anthology of Verse Translations; edited by A.J. Arberry, Everyman's Library, 1972
DESCENT
I made a far journey
A wanderer on earth.
As Moses' people
Inhabiting.
'Spirit, go a journey,'
I have made.'
Even so thence
And I am dumb.
A.J. Arberry: 'Persian Poems', an Anthology of Verse Translations, edited by A.J. Arberry, Everyman's Library, 1972
wherever I fall.
Translation by Franklin D. Lewis „Rumi - Past and Present, East and West“ One World Publications, Oxford, 2000
This Marriage
(Ode 2667)
an omen as welcome
May it be ever like milk and sugar, this marriage like wine and halvah.
May this marriage be blessed with leaves and fruits like the date tree;
May this marriage be laughing forever, today, tomorrow, like the hour is of paradise.
May this marriage be the sign of compassion and the approval of happiness here and hereafter;
May this marriage be fair of fame, fair of face and fair of omen as the moon in the azure sky.
I have fallen silent for words cannot describe how the spirit has mingled with this marriage.
Translation by A.J. Arberry „Mystical Poems of Rumi 2“; The University of Chicago Press, 1991
Our feast, our wedding
Our feast, our wedding
Coming to us so beautifully.
* Huma: legendary bird which eats bone. The person on whom she casts her shadow becomes a Sultan. Also called stately bird.
* Halva: Sweetmeats.
A Marriage at Daybreak
Do you know, brother, that you are a prince?
is the world?
to do without God?
But how can you not drink from this other fountain?
(IV, 3189-3240) - Rumi: One-Handed Basket Weaving - Coleman Barks, Maypop, 1991
Wedding Night
The day I've died, my pall is moving on -
Which seed fell in the earth that did not grow there?
Rumi was born in Balkh (then a city of the Greater Khorasan province of Persia, now part of Afghanistan) and died in Konya (in present-day Turkey). His
birthplace and native tongue indicate a Persian heritage. He also wrote his poetry in Persian and his works are widely read in Iran and Afghanistan where the
language is spoken. He lived most of his life and produced his works under the Seljuk Empire and his descendants today are Turkish citizens and live in
modern day Turkey.
Rumi's importance transcends national and ethnic borders. He has had a significant influence on both Turkish and Persian literature throughout the centuries.
His poems have been translated into many of the world's languages and have appeared in various formats. He was also the founder of the Mevlevi order,
better known as the „Whirling Dervishes“, who believe in performing their worship in the form of dance and music ceremony called the sema.
The general theme of his thoughts, like that of the other mystic and Sufi poets of the Persian literature, is essentially about the concept of Tawheed (unity) and
union with his beloved (the primal root) from which / whom he has been cut and fallen aloof, and his longing and desire for re-unity.
I am not of the empyrean, nor of the dust, nor of existence, nor of entity.
I am not of the this world, nor of the next, nor of Paradise, nor of Hell
Come even though you have b roken your vows a thousand times,
Rumi's love and his bereavement for the death of Shams found their expression in an outpouring of music, dance and lyric poems, Divani Shamsi Tabrizi. He
himself went out searching for Shams and journeyed again to Damascus. There, he realized:
within me as companion?
He died on December 17, 1273 in Konya; Rumi was laid to rest beside his father, and a splendid shrine, the Yeşil Türbe „Green Tomb“, was erected over
his tomb.
Rumi's life is fully described in Shams-ud-din Ahmed Aflkis Manakib-ul-Arifin (written between 1318 and 1353). He claimed descent from
the caliph Abu Bakr, and from the Khwarizm-Shah Sultan Ala-ud-Din b. Tukush (1199–1220), whose only daughter, Malika-i-Jahan, had
been married to Jalal-ud-dins grandfather.
Work
Rumi's poetry is often divided into various categories: the quatrains (rubaiyat) and odes (ghazals) of the Divan, the six books of the Mathnawi, the
discourses, the letters, and the almost unknown Six Sermons. Rumi's major work is Masnavi-ye Manavi (Spiritual Couplets), a six-volume poem regarded by
many Sufis as second in importance only to the Qur'an.
* Fihi Ma Fih (In It What's in It ) is composed of Rumi's speeches on different subjects. Rumi himself did not prepare or write these discourses. They were
recorded by his son Sultan Valad or some other disciple of Rumi and put together as a book. The title may mean, „What's in the Mathnawi is in this too.“ Some
of the discourses are addressed to Muin al-Din Parvane. Some portions of it are commentary on Masnavi.
* Majalis-i Sab'a (seven sessions) contains seven sermons (as the name implies) given in seven different assemblies. As Aflaki relates, after Sham-i Tabrizi,
Rumi gave sermons at the request of notables, especially Salah al-Din Zarqubi.
The Mevlevi Sufi order was founded in 1273 by Rumi's followers after his death. His first successor in the rectorship of the order was
Husam Chelebi himself, after whose death in 1284 Rumi's younger and only surviving son, Sultan Walad, favorably known as author of
the mystical Mathnawi Rabbnma, or the Book of the Guitar (died 1312), was installed as grand master of the order. The leadership of the
order has been kept in Jalaluddin's family in Iconium uninterruptedly for the last six hundred years.