Rumi Poems: my personal Favorites
These are my alltime favorite love poems, written by Rumi, the 13th century mystic love poet. Especially the first Rumi poem, Looking for your face, brings tears to my eyes and love to my heart every time I read it. I truly hope these poems move you in the same way; will start to heal your soul and bring more love to the world.
Looking for your Face | Not Like This Before | Only Breath | Salvation | The Alchemy of Love | The Intellectual | The Still Point of Ecstasy |
From the beginning of my life
I have been looking for your face
but today I have seen it.
Today I have seen
the charm, the beauty,
the unfathomable grace
of the face
that I was looking for.
Today I have found you
and those that laughed
and scorned me yesterday
are sorry that they were not looking
as I did.
I am bewildered by the magnificence
of your beauty
and wish to see you with a hundred eyes.
My heart has burned with passion
and has searched forever
for this wondrous beauty
that I now behold.
I am ashamed
to call this love human
and afraid of God
to call it divine.
Your fragrant breath
like the morning breeze
has come to the stillness of the garden
You have breathed new life into me
I have become your sunshine
and also your shadow.
My soul is screaming in ecstasy
Every fiber of my being
is in love with you
Your effulgence
has lit a fire in my heart
and you have made radiant
for me
the earth and sky.
My arrow of love
has arrived at the target
I am in the house of mercy
and my heart
is a place of prayer.
I wasn't like this before. I wasn't out of my mind and senses.
Once I used to be wise like you, not crazy, insane and broken down like I am now.
I wasn't the admirer of life which has no trace, no being.
I used to ask : "Who is this?
What is that?,"
and search all the time.
Since you have wisdom,
sit and think
that probably I was like this before.
I haven't changed much.
I used to try
to make myself better than everybody.
I hadn't been hunted
with the ever-growing Love before.
I tried to rise above the sky
with my ambition
yet I didn't know.
I was just wandering in the desert.
At the end,
I have raised a treasure from the ground.
Divani Shamsi Tarbrizi,
from "Magnificent One",
by Nevit Orguz Ergin.
Not Christian or Jew or Muslim,
not Hindu, Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion or cultural system.
I am not from the East or the West,
not out of the ocean
or up from the ground,
not natural or etheral,
not composed of elements at all.
I do not exist,
am not an entity in this world
or the next,
did not decend from Adam or Eve
or any origin story.
My place is placeless,
a trace of the traceless.
Neither body or soul.
I belong to the beloved,
have seen the two worlds as one
and that one call to and know,
first, last, outer, inner,
only that breath breathing human being.
from The Essential Rumi translations
by Coleman Barks
There is no salvation for the soul
But to fall in Love.
It has to creep and crawl
Among the Lovers first.
Only Lovers can escape
From these two worlds.
This was written in creation.
Only from the Heart
Can you reach the sky.
The rose of Glory
Can only be raised in the Heart.
You come to us
from another world
From beyond the stars
and void of space.
Transcendent, Pure,
Of unimaginable beauty,
Bringing with you
the essence of love.
You transform all
who are touched by you.
Mundane concerns,
troubles, and sorrows
dissolve in your presence,
Bringing joy
to ruler and ruled
To peasant and King.
You bewilder us
with your grace.
All evils
transform into
goodness.
You are the master alchemist.
You light the fire of love
in earth and sky
in heart and soul
of every being.
Through your loving
existence and nonexistence erge.
All opposites unite.
All that is profane
becomes sacred again.
The intellectual is always showing off;
the lover is always getting lost.
The intellectual runs away, afraid of drowning;
the whole business of love is to drown in the sea.
Intellectuals plan their repose;
overs are ashamed to rest.
The lover is always alone, even surrounded with people;
like water and oil, he remains apart.
The man who goes to the trouble of giving advice to a lover gets nothing.
He's mocked by passion.
Love is like musk.
It attracts attention.
Love is a tree, and lovers are its shade.
On the Night of Creation I was awake.
Busy at work while everyone slept.
I was there to see the first wink
and hear the first tale told.
I was the first one caught
in the hair of the Great Imposter.
Whirling around the still-point of ecstasy
I spun like the wheel of heaven.
How can I describe this to you?--
you were born later.
I was a companion of the Ancient Lover;
Like a bowl with a broken rim
I endured his tyranny.
Why shouldn't I be as lustrous as the King's cup?--
I have lived in the room of treasures.
Why shouldn't this bubble become the sea?--
I am the secret that lies at the bottom...
Sh...No more words--
Hear only the voice within.
Remember, the first thing He said was:
We are beyond words.
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