With loving gratitude to Coleman Barks, whose translations of Rumi brought the spiritual light of Jalal al-Din Rumi to the English-speaking world. Most people in the English-speaking world know of Rumi’s poetry only because Coleman dedicated his life to this work.
Coleman Barks passed away on Monday February 23, 2026.
This post is in tribute to his life, his work, his memory.
(To read the obituary, click here.)
Say I Am You
I am dust particles in sunlight.
I am the round sun.
To the bits of dust I say, Stay.
To the sun, Keep moving.
I am morning mist,
and the breathing of evening.
I am wind in the top of a grove,
and surf on the cliff.
Mast, rudder, helmsman, and keel,
I am also the coral reef they founder on.
I am a tree with a trained parrot in its branches.
Silence, thought, and voice.
The musical air coming through a flute,
a spark off a stone, a flickering in metal.
Both candle and the moth crazy around it.
Rose and nightingale lost in the fragrance.
I am all orders of being,
the circling galaxy,
the evolutionary intelligence,
the lift and the falling away.
What is and what is not.
You who know Jalaluddin,
You the One in all, say who I am.
Say I am you.
– Jalaluddin Rumi –
Translation by Coleman Barks
From Rumi: The Big Red Book -The Great Masterpiece Celebrating Mystical Love & Friendship
~~~~~~~~~~
Roses Underfoot
If anyone asks you to say who you are,
say without hesitation, soul
within soul within soul.
There’s a pearl diver who does not know
how to swim! No matter.
Pearls are handed him on the beach.
We lovers laugh to hear, “This should be
more that and that more this,”
coming from people sitting in a wagon
tilted in a ditch.
Going in search of the heart, I found
a huge rose, and roses under all our feet!
How to say this to someone who denies it?
The robe we wear is the sky’s cloth.
Everything is soul and flowering.
Translation by Coleman Barks
From Rumi – The Book of Love: Poems of Ecstasy and Longing
~~~~~~~~~
Thank you, Coleman.
