Poems by Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi

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If You Show Patience

If you show patience, I'll rid you of this virtue.

If you fall asleep, I'll rub the sleep from your eyes.

If you become a mountain, I'll melt you in fire.

And if you become an ocean, I'll drink all your water.

Excerpt from Rumi, 'Thief of Sleep' translated by by Shahram Shiva

by Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi

How Long

How long will you think about this painful life?

How long will you think about this harmful world?

The only thing it can take from you is your body.

Don't say all this rubbish and stop thinking.

Excerpt from Rumi, 'Thief of Sleep' translated by by Shahram Shiva

by Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi

Like This

If anyone asks you

how the perfect satisfaction

of all our sexual wanting

will look, lift your face

and say,

Like this.

When someone mentions the gracefulness

of the nightsky, climb up on the roof

by Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi

There is a Community of Spirit

There is a community of the spirit.

Join it, and feel the delight

of walking in the noisy street

and being the noise.

Drink all your passion,

and be a disgrace.

Close both eyes

to see with the other eye.

by Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi

Not Here

There's courage involved if you want

to become truth.

There is a broken- open place in a lover.

Where are those qualities of bravery and

sharp compassion in this group? What's the

use of old and frozen thought?

I want a howling hurt. This is not a treasury

where gold is stored; this is for copper.

by Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi

Ghazal of Rumi

I was dead, then alive.

Weeping, then laughing.

The power of love came into me,

and I became fierce like a lion,

then tender like the evening star.

He said, ‘You’re not mad enough.

You don’t belong in this house.’

I went wild and had to be tied up.

by Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi

Come, Come, Whoever You Are

Wonderer, worshipper, lover of leaving.

It doesn't matter.

Ours is not a caravan of despair.

Come, even if you have broken your vow

a thousand times

Come, yet again, come, come.

by Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi

There is a life-force within your soul

There is a life-force within your soul, seek that life.

There is a gem in the mountain of your body, seek that

mine.

O traveler, if you are in search of That

Don't look outside, look inside yourself and seek That.

Excerpt from Rumi, 'Thief of Sleep' translated by by Shahram Shiva

by Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi

Birdsong

Birdsong brings relief

to my longing

I'm just as ecstatic as they are,

but with nothing to say!

Please universal soul, practice

some song or something through me!

Excerpts from the translation of Rumi by Coleman Barks.

by Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi

The Self We Share

Thirst is angry with water. Hunger bitter

with bread.

The cave wants nothing to do with the sun.

This is dumb, the self- defeating way

we've been.

A gold mine is calling us into its temple.

Instead, we bend and keep picking up rocks

from the ground.

by Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi

The Seed Market

Can you find another market like this?

Where,

with your one rose

you can buy hundreds of rose gardens?

Where,

for one seed

get a whole wilderness?

For one weak breath,

by Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi

In love

In love, aside from sipping the wine of timelessness,

nothing else exists.

There is no reason for living except for giving one's life.

I said, "First I know you, then I die."

He said, "For the one who knows Me, there is no dying."

Excerpt from Rumi, 'Thief of Sleep' translated by by Shahram Shiva

by Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi