“The New Rule” by Rumi

It’s the old rule that drunks have to argue
and get into fights.
The lover is just as bad: he falls into a hole.
But down in that hole he finds something shining,
worth more than any amount of money or power.

Last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street.
I took it as a sign to start singing,
falling up into the bowl of sky.
The bowl breaks. Everywhere is falling everywhere.
Nothing else to do.

Here’s the new rule: break the wineglass,
and fall toward the Glassblower’s breath.

Rumi
Open Secret: Versions of Rumi
trans. John Moyne and Coleman Barks

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Short Poems by Rumi

I was happy enough to stay still
inside the pearl inside the shell,

but the hurricane of experience
lashed me out of hiding and made me

a wave moving into shore, saying loudly
the ocean’s secret as I went, and then

spent there, I slept like fog against
the cliff, another stillness.

***

I used to have fiery intensity
and a flowing sweetness.

The waters were illusion.
The flames, made of snow.

Was I dreaming then?
Am I awake now?

***

I run around looking for the Friend.
My life is almost over,
but I’m still asleep!

When it happens, if it happens,
that I meet the Friend,
will I get the lost years back?

***

We search the world for the great untying
of what was wed to us with birth
and gets undone at dying.

We sleep beside a stream, thirsty.
Cursed and unlucky his whole life,

an old man finishes up in a niche
of a ruin, inches from the treasure!

***

There is a desert
I long to be walking,
a wide emptiness:

peace beyond any
understanding of it.

Rumi
trans. Coleman Barks
in Birdsong (1993)

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