The Essential Rumi – reissue

The workshop, the materials
are what does not exist.

Try and be a sheet of paper with nothing on it.
Be a spot of ground where nothing is growing,
where something might be planted,
a seed, possibly, from the Absolute

empty of worrying.
Think of who created thought!
Why do you stay in prison
when the door is so wide open?

said,
“The world is a play, a children’s game,
and you are the children.”
God speaks the truth.

Don’t hand me another glass of wine.
Pour it in my mouth.
I’ve lost the way to my mouth

Drink all your passion,
and be a disgrace.
Close both eyes
to see with the other eye.
Open your hands,
if you want to be held.
Sit down in this circle.
Quit acting like a wolf, and feel
the shepherd’s love filling you.

Why should I seek? I am the same as
he.

The axe doesn’t worry how thick the branches are.

in the pomegranate flowers.
If you do not come, these do not matter.
If you do come, these do not matter.

Come to the orchard in Spring.
There is light and wine, and sweethearts

ground.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn’t make any sense.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.

I would love to kiss you.
The price of kissing is your life.
Now my loving is running toward my life shouting,
What a bargain, let’s buy it.