
Your soul is a guest of your body for only a couple of days.
Yet, you have become so attached to this Earth
that you don’t want to listen when I talk about death.
Your soul is longing for that mansion –
that “death before death.”*
Unfortunately, your body’s donkey
has fallen asleep in the middle of the road.
*Total destruction of the self before the death of the body.
Rubailer (2016), Rubai 2, page 80.
The Rubaiyat of Rumi, The Ergin Translations (approx. pub. date 3/2022), Rubai 108, Volume 1.