Transition from Marcia: Rumi

The Knots Untie (1)

Fire is whispering a secret in smoke's ear.

This aloeswood loves me

because I help it live out its purpose.

 

With me it becomes fragrance,

and then disappears altogether.

 

The knots untie and open into absence,

as you do with me, my friend.

 

Eaten by flame, and smoked out into the sky.

This is most fortunate.

 

What's unlucky is not to change and disappear.

This way leads through humiliation and contempt.

 

The Knots Untie (2)

We have tried the fullness of presence.

Now it's time for desolation.

 

Love is pulling us out by the ears to school.

Love wants us clean of resentment

and those impulses that misguide our souls.

 

We are asleep, but Khidr

keeps sprinkling water on our faces.

Love will tell us the rest of what

we need to know soon.

 

Then we'll be deeply asleep and profoundly awake

simultaneously, like cave companions.

 

Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī | Daily readings of the 13th Century Persian poet as translated by Coleman Barks