(Rumi, version by Coleman Barks)
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.”
Tag: rumi
The Door is Round and Open
(Rumi, version by Coleman Barks)
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.
black hole man
he was a black hole man
an invisible centre
he was being not-there
holding things together
said ‘you know it takes nothing
to make things spin’
and i saw nothing
when i looked at him
now i’m a black hole man
’cause i couldn’t absorb it
’til i fell in the centre
of my own orbit
and there’s nothing the matter
no, nothing at all
and i’m circling round it
and i feel the call
and we are black hole men
in a world of matter
and we move together
though we seem to be scattered
and it’s up, down, strange, top
falling in will never stop
but if you can read rumi
while you think john bell
better look in a mirror
while you still can
before gravity fails
and you’re a black hole man
— Sept. 22, 2006
The Circle Around the Zero
(Rumi, version by Coleman Barks)
A lover doesn’t figure the odds.
He figures he came clean from God as a gift without a reason,
and so he gives without cause or calculation or limit.
A conventionally religious person behaves a certain way to achieve salvation.
A lover gambles everything — the self, the circle around the zero.
He or she cuts and throws it all away.
This is beyond any religion.
Lovers do not require from God any proof or any text.
Nor do they knock on the door to make sure this is the right street.
They run and they run.