Falling in Love with Rumi

I have long endeavored to seek out the poetry of Rumi and haven't until this weekend laid my hands or mind on his writings. I purchased Rumi The Book of Love just the other day and have fallen completely in love with his art. The love he writes of is the love of God, but it all rings fairly true on this more temporal and painfully human plane.

Where You Love From

Look inside and find where a person
loves from. That's the reality
not what they say.

Hypocrites
give attention to form, the right
and wrong ways of professing belief.
Grow instead in universal light.


When that revealed itself, God gave it
a thousand different names, the least
of those sweet-breathing names being,
the one who is not in need of anyone.

~~~~~~

You've so distracted me,
your absence fans my love.
Don't ask how.

Then you come near.
"Do not...," I say, and
"Do not...," you answer.

Don't ask why
this delights me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

In your light I learn how to love.
In your beauty, how to make poems.

You dance inside my chest
where no one sees you,

but sometimes I do,
and that sight becomes this art.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Drumsound rises on the air,
its throb, my heart.

A voice inside the beat says,
"I know you're tired,
but come, this is the way."

~~~~~~~~

Are you jealous of the ocean's generosity?
Why would you refuse to give
this love to anyone?

Fish don't hold the sacred liquid in cups!
They swim the huge fluid freedom.