EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES - Lesson One

TWO POEMS
BY MEVLANA JALAL AL-DIN MUHAMMAD RUMI
(Translation by Coleman Barks with John Moyne)

1
Gamble everything for love
If you're a true human being
If you don't want that gamble,
Leave this gathering.
Half-heartedness does not reach into majesty.
You set out to find God,
But you keep stopping
At mean-spirited roadhouses.

Gamble everything for love
If you're a true human being.
If not, leave this gathering.

2
You have gone to the secret world.
Which way is it?
You broke the cage and flew.
You heard the drum that you called home.
You left this humiliating shelf,
This disorienting desert where we are given wrong directions.

What use now a crown?
You have become the sun.
No need for a belt.
You have slipped out of your waist.
I have heard that near the end
your eyes were looking at soul.
No looking now.
You live inside the soul.

You are the strange autumn rose
That led the winter wind in by withering.
You are the strange autumn rose
That led the winter wind in by withering.
You are rain soaking everywhere from cloud to ground.
No bother talking, flowing silence
and sweet sleep inside the Friend.