Reply to Rumi

There is half a full moon hanging out

The ocean is bringing back yesterday’s sand

Speak old mountain

Your beauty is not hidden

Even in the dawn

Love fades

   Only when we lack the courage

After the winds

Countless universes rising in the air

We breath their life

Without caring

   For their school of righteous indignation

Enter danger!

What tears?

Let your anger be with me

And leave my lover

   To return unscathed

Admit the many facets of love

Yes, you know how to reach each of them

In your strength

   You contain your vulnerability

Turn your back to me

I delight in your courage

And kiss you while your back is turned

Up til dawn?

How well you let my music play

    Look now while I find a tune

Dead music? Wild trick

Where are you while my head is turned

I catch your glance

What cleverness - no object to love?

   That would be one dead universe!

Should I reveal myself to you tonight

Tired from singing the dead songs

Face clouded and eyes weary from weeping

Would you know the cause?

   And turn away sick of my joyless existence?

To choose is to choose

To hold my pain outside myself

For me, you do not take it into yourself

But no, I will put on my strength, like a cloak

   And distance will have improved this closeness

When sadness is a disguise,

And tears a poor excuse for delight

You see through me ignoring the self pity

Your face smiles with mine

   As if there were only one, object of love

And it would be you again in a new guise

Imagine the pain when reality

Awakes you to remorse

The words would not flow so easily

   As at the well we both fell in

copywrite 03/25/2010  Adah Cain

 Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī   also known as Rumi, was a philosopher and mystic who wrote some of the most marvelous love poems you could ever hope for.  He lived 1207 to 1273, but his spirit lives on for many in his poems.  When reading his love poems especially you may find that, like me, you will feel like responding to his questioning mind.  His love was aimed at the earth and all her beauty with a naturalist's insight and he missed nothing of the world.  I like especially to look at old artwork while reading his words.