A Few Things Rumi Might Have Said
Your task is not to seek love,
but to find all the barriers
you’ve built against it.
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Stop acting so small.
You are the ecstatic motion of the universe.
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Dance, when you’re broken open.
Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off.
Dance in the middle of the fighting.
Dance in your blood.
Dance when you’re perfectly free.
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You were born with wings,
why crawl through life?
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When you do things from your soul,
you feel a river of joy moving in you.
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When I am with you, we stay up all night.
When you’re not here, I can’t go to sleep.
Praise God for those two insomnias!
And the difference between them.
—
Copyright 2016 Michael Simms. These epigrams have been adapted from various translations of the poetry of Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, the 13th-century Persian poet and Islamic scholar.
Thank you!
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