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Who cares if death comes and grabs my being?
I’ll welcome death.
If I have hundreds of lives, I’ll give away all of them. Continue reading “Who Cares If Death Comes? (1/26/2025)”
Who cares if death comes and grabs my being?
I’ll welcome death.
If I have hundreds of lives, I’ll give away all of them. Continue reading “Who Cares If Death Comes? (1/26/2025)”
See the bloody tears, the hundreds of torn shirts caused by Your grief.
Listen to all the yelling and screaming.
Look at the blood of my lungs,
smeared all over my face, my back, my front. Continue reading “See the Bloody Tears (1/12/2025)”
Assume I am a thorn, a bad one.
But, the thorn and rose go together.
When a jeweler weighs gold,
he puts barley as a weight on the other side of the scale. Continue reading “The Time of Union Has Come (10/6/2024)”
Is there no music, no merrymaking for this lover
to help him attain his desire, to get his troubles to settle down?
In the morning, because of his separation,
he was frightened by daily troubles.
But at night, he found mercy from His moon. Continue reading “You Have Me in Return (9/24/2023)”
If all I have made are mistakes and You are my only right, that is enough for me.
You are the only meaning of my ruined, wrecked life.
At the time of my leaving this world,
if they ask me, “What did you do?”
I will answer, “You.” And, that is enough for me.
Rubaiyat (2016), Rubai 3, page 454.
The Rubaiyat of Rumi, The Ergin Translations (apprx.pub. fall 2023), Rubai 967, Volume 3.
Where are you, O God’s martyrs,
O ones who looked for trouble in the Karbala* desert?
Where are you, O impatient lovers,
O ones who fly faster than the birds in the sky? Continue reading “Where Are You? (2/20/2022)”
O One who takes the hearts of lovers as hostage,
don’t shed the blood of lovers.Go away.
Look at the traces of blood on every road.
Hear the bloody yells everywhere. Continue reading “This Heart (9/26/2021)”
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.
On the way to Love, each lover must either annihilate himself
or give up his life in death.
Some say,
“Love’s goal is to drink water from the Fountain of Life.”
These are just empty words, O lover, just empty words.
Rubailer (2016), Rubai #3, page 226.
A Rubaiyat of Rumi, The Ergin Translation (pub. 11/2021)