when lilies sprout…

“The Shape of My Tongue”

This mirror inside me shows . . .
I can’t say what, but I can’t not know!

I run from body. I run from spirit.
I do not belong anywhere.

I’m not alive!
You smell the decay?

You talk about my craziness.
Listen rather to the honed-blade sanity I say.

This gourd head on top of a dervish robe,
do I look like someone you know?

This dipper gourd full of liquid,
upsidedown and not spilling a drop!

Or if it spills, it drops into God
and rounds into pearls.

I form a cloud over that ocean
and gather spillings.

When Shams is here,
I rain.

After a day or two, lilies sprout,
the shape of my tongue.

– Version by Coleman Barks from the “The Essential Rumi”

World literature Blog Digest - when lilies sprout... Says:
November 11th, 2006 at 5:46 pm
[...] Courtesy Sunlight Ruminations My opinion is that this post should be rememberedLink to original article [...]
unaiza nasim Says:
November 11th, 2006 at 8:48 pm
Amazing!
Never read Rumi in English and never understood him much in Urdu.

Jahane Rumi