Rumi
Rumi
Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, also known as Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī, Mawlānā/Mevlânâ, Mevlevî/Mawlawī, and more popularly simply as Rumi, was a 13th-century Persian poet, jurist, Islamic scholar, theologian, and Sufi mystic. Rumi's influence transcends national borders and ethnic divisions: Iranians, Tajiks, Turks, Greeks, Pashtuns, other Central Asian Muslims, and the Muslims of South Asia have greatly appreciated his spiritual legacy for the past seven centuries. His poems have been widely translated into many of the world's languages and transposed into...
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth30 September 1207
Because I cannot sleep i make music in the night
Some nights stay up till dawn, as the moon sometimes does for the sun. Be a full bucket pulled up the dark way of a well, then lifted out into light.
This world's existence is one night long. There's a great lively gathering that night, but some people sleep through it.
If you wish to shine like day, burn up the night of self-existence. Dissolve in the Being who is everything.
That's how you came here, like a star without a name. Move across the night sky with those anonymous lights.
I said to the night, "If you are in love with the moon, it is because you never stay for long." The night turned to me and said, "It is not my fault. I never see the Sun, how can I know that love is endless?
Lovers drink wine all day and night and tear the veils of the mind. When drunk with love's wine, body, heart and soul become one.
Daylight, full of small dancing particles and the one great turning, our souls are dancing with you, without feet, they dance. Can you see them when I whisper in your ear? All day and night, music, a quiet, bright reedsong. If it fades, we fade.
Last night my teacher taught me the lesson of Poverty: Having nothing and wanting nothing.
Without you the instruments would die. One sits close beside you. Another takes a long kiss. The tambourine begs, Touch my skin so I can be myself. Let me feel you enter each limb bone by bone, that what died last night can be whole today. Why live some soberer way, and feel you ebbing out? I won't do it. Either give me enough wine or leave me alone, now that I know how it is to be with you in constant conversation.
There's no one with intelligence in this town except that man over there playing with the children, the one riding the stick horse. He has keen, fiery insight and vast dignity like the night sky, but he conceals it in the madness of child's play.
All day I think about it, then at night I say it. Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing? I have no idea. My soul is from elsewhere, I’m sure of that,and I intend to end up there. Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul? I cannot stop asking. If I could taste one sip of an answer, I could break out of this prison for drunks. I didn’t come here of my own accord, and I can’t leave that way. Whoever brought me here, will have to take me home.
When someone mentions the gracefulness of the night sky, climb up on the roof and dance and say, like this?
The world is a playground, and death is the night.