Not Intrigued With Evening

What the material world values does

not shine the same in the truth of the soul.

You have been interested

in your shadow.  Look instead directly at the sun.

What can we know by just

watching the time-and-space shapes of each other?  

Someone half awake in the night sees imaginary dangers;

the morning star rises; the horizon grows

defined; people become friends in a moving caravan.  

Night birds may think

daybreak a kind of darkness, because

that's all they know.  

It's a fortunate

bird who's not intrigued with evening,

who flies in the sun we call Shams.

Excerpt from the translations of Rumi by Coleman Barks