Sunday, March 24, 2013

Who is this king - by Rumi


Who is this king
That forms another king out of the ground,
Who for the sake of two beggars
Makes himself a beggar?

Who is this with his hand out 
Saying, Please give just a little,
So I can give you a kingdom.

He heals. He enlivens.
He tells the water to boil
And the steam to fade into air.

He makes the dying world eternal
His greatest alchemy
Is how he undoes the binding
That keeps love from breathing deep.
He loosens the chest.

With no tool he fashions where we live.
Do not grieve for your rusty, iron heart.
He will polish it to a steel mirror.

And as you are being lowered into the ground,
Closed away from friends, don’t cry.

He turns the ants and the snakes 
Into beautiful new companions.

Every second he changes cruelty 
To a loyal friendship.

Remember the proverb:
Eat the grapes, do not keep talking about the garden,
Eat the grapes.

From a rough stone ledge 
Come a hundred marble fountains.

Out of unconditional emptiness
Comes this planet with all its qualities.

Lake water over there,
Out of one huge NO
Comes a chorus of yeses.

Rivers of light flow from human eyes,
And consider your ears, where language
Alchemizes into amber.

He gives the soul a house, 
Then another and another.

He descends into dirt
And makes it majesty.

Be silent now.
Say fewer and fewer praise poems.
Let yourself become living poetry. 

rumi

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