Rumi: Poems

by Rumi, Jalal Al-Din; Washington, Peter

• ISBN13: 9780307263520
• ISBN10: 0307263525
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-06-06
• Publisher: Everyman's Library

Summary

The poetry of the medieval Persian sage Rumi combines lyrical beauty with spiritual profundity, a sense of rapture, and acute awareness of human suffering in ways that speak directly to contemporary audiences. Trained in Sufisma mystic tradition within IslamRumi founded the Sufi order known to us as the Whirling Dervishes, who use dance and music as part of their spiritual devotion. Many of Rumi's poems speak of a yearning for ecstatic union with the divine Beloved. But his images bring the sacred and the earthy together in startling ways, describing divine love in vividly human terms. This volume draws on a wide variety of translationsfrom the early twentieth century to the presentof Rumi's deeply moving, sensually vibrant poetry.

Author Biography

Jalal al-Din, known as Rumi (i.e., from Rum) or Mawlana (Master), was born in 1207 at Balkh in northern Afganistan. He worked as a preacher, succeeding his father, and founded the Sufi order known to us as the Whirling Dervishes, who use dance and music as part of their spiritual devotion. He died in 1273 and his burial place in Konya remains a shrine to this day.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. 11
The guest house	p. 17
And he is with us	p. 18
Come, beggars	p. 19
My worst habit	p. 20
The marriage of true minds	p. 21
You and I	p. 22
The friend who said 'I'	p. 23
The phrasing must change	p. 25
Saladin's begging bowl	p. 27
One by one	p. 29
A community of the spirit	p. 32
Look at love	p. 34
How long will you hide	p. 36
Quatrains	p. 38
Of being woven	p. 41
Clothes abandoned on the shore	p. 43
The diver's clothes lying empty	p. 45
The root of the root of your Self	p. 46
Does personality survive?	p. 48
All my friends	p. 51
The fragrant air	p. 52
Don't be bitter my friend	p. 53
The waterwheel	p. 54
Search the darkness	p. 55
In every breath	p. 56
A mouse and a frog	p. 58
Quatrains	p. 60
The weeping flute	p. 63
What a man can say	p. 64
The world which is made of our love for emptiness	p. 65
I am the slave who set the master free	p. 66
Restless	p. 67
Quietness	p. 69
The perfect man	p. 70
The true Sufi	p. 72
The birds of Solomon	p. 73
Love and fear	p. 74
If you don't have	p. 76
The pull of love	p. 78
Elegy for Sana'i	p. 80
Quatrains	p. 81
Story water	p. 85
The soul of prayer	p. 87
The bird on the city-wall	p. 88
'Here am I'	p. 89
Solomon's crooked crown	p. 90
The evil in ourselves	p. 91
The blind follower	p. 93
The Sufi in the orchard	p. 94
The truth within us	p. 95
The treasure-seeker	p. 96
Gnats inside the wind	p. 98
The far mosque	p. 99
The monk who searched for a man	p. 100
The thief in the orchard	p. 101
Fine feathers	p. 102
The foal that would not drink	p. 103
An empty garlic	p. 104
The camel, the ox and the ram	p. 105
The man who stole a snake, on the answer to prayer	p. 106
Galen and the madman	p. 107
Omar and the man who thought he saw the new moon	p. 108
Red shirt	p. 109
The grammarian and the boatman	p. 110
The three brothers and the Chinese princess	p. 111
Quatrains	p. 119
If you stay awake	p. 122
Asleep to the world	p. 124
Reality and appearance	p. 126
God in nature	p. 127
Amor agitat molem	p. 129
Immediate knowledge	p. 130
Mystics know	p. 132
The relativity of evil	p. 134
The soul of goodness in things evil	p. 136
Good words	p. 137
The complete artist	p. 138
An awkward comparison	p. 139
Spiritual churning	p. 140
The necessary foil	p. 141
Tradition and intuition	p. 142
Someone digging in the ground	p. 143
The elephant in the dark, on the reconciliation of contrarieties	p. 144
The ladder to heaven	p. 145
Love is reckless	p. 147
Feeling and thinking	p. 148
Tending two shops	p. 149
The parable of the anxious cow	p. 151
The greedy wife and the cat	p. 152
The dog in the doorway	p. 153
The carnal soul	p. 155
Acts of helplessness	p. 156
Mystical perception	p. 158
The world of time	p. 160
Quatrains	p. 161
The mouse and the camel	p. 164
My secret beloved	p. 166
This is love	p. 168
Only you	p. 169
You are my life	p. 171
Talking through the door	p. 172
As your sword	p. 175
Sweep the dust off the sea	p. 176
You ask me	p. 178
The wine of love	p. 180
You are drunk	p. 181
A great wagon	p. 183
You are	p. 184
Did I not say to you	p. 186
Quatrains	p. 188
The divine factory	p. 192
Chickpea to cook	p. 193
The uses of tribulation	p. 195
You have seized me by the ear	p. 198
Enough words?	p. 199
Die now	p. 201
Remembered music	p. 202
Do you break our harp, exalted one	p. 204
The flute weeps	p. 205
Everywhere	p. 207
I am	p. 209
Whatever happens	p. 212
If a tree could move on foot or wing	p. 214
Where everything is music	p. 216
The unseen power	p. 218
Song of the reed	p. 219
If you can only reflect	p. 222
The ascending soul	p. 223
The progress of Man	p. 224
Where did it all go	p. 226
The negative way	p. 227
Dissolver of sugar	p. 229
The heart is like a grain of corn	p. 230
Quatrains	p. 231
Deification	p. 234
We came whirling	p. 236
Two discourses	p. 239
Acknowledgments	p. 251
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