You Are That Freshness
When it’s cold and raining,
you are more beautiful.
And the snow brings me
even closer to Your Lips.
The Inner Secret, that which was never born,
You are That Freshness, and I am with You now.
I can’t explain the goings,
or the comings. You enter suddenly,
and I am nowhere again.
Inside the Majesty.
– Jalaluddin Rumi –
Translated by Coleman Barks with A.J. Arberry
From The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry,
edited by Stephen Mitchell
~~~~~~~~~~~
Praise to the Emptiness
Praise to the emptiness that blanks out existence. Existence:
This place made from our love for that emptiness!
Yet somehow comes emptiness,
this existence goes.
Praise to that happening, over and over!
For years I pulled my own existence out of emptiness.
Then one swoop, one swing of the arm,
that work is over.
Free of who I was, free of presence, free of
dangerous fear, hope,
free of mountainous wanting.
The here-and-now mountain is a tiny piece of a piece
of straw
blown off into emptiness.
These words I’m saying so much begin to lose meaning:
Existence, emptiness, mountain, straw:
Words and what they try to say swept
out the window, down the slant of the roof.
– Jalaluddin Rumi –
Translated by Coleman Barks with John Moyne
From The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry,
edited by Stephen Mitchell
