Not Like Your Halfway Happiness (10/3/2021)

Not Like Your Halfway Happiness (10/3/2021)

We have neither silk garments nor silver, but we are happy.

In trouble and fear, we are content.

We are drunk on the wine of eternal submission.

This is not like your halfway happiness.

Rubailer (2016), Rubai 3, page 343

The Rubaiyat of Rumi, The Ergin Translations (approx. pub. 5/2022), Rubai 732, Volume 2

I was Amazed (6/13/2021)

I was Amazed (6/13/2021)

When I was drinking wine in Your tavern one day,

I ripped off this cloak of mine, this cloak made of clay.

In Your now-ruined tavern,

I saw the harmony in its workings

and in the workings of the universe.

There was such balance of creation and destruction.

I was amazed.

Rubailer (2016), Rubai 2, page 326.

A Rubaiyat of Rumi, The Ergin Translations (November 2021), Rubai 692 (Volume 2)

I was Amazed (10/11/2020)

I was Amazed (10/11/2020)

When I was drinking wine in Your tavern one day,

I started ripping off this cloak of mine, this cloak made of clay.

In Your tavern, I saw the harmony in its workings

and in the workings of the Universe.

There was such a balance of creation and destruction.

I was amazed.

Rubailer (2016), Rubai #2, page 326.

How Lucky (1/12/20)

How Lucky (1/12/10)

The soul’s Sultan pushes us from one play to another

as if we were pawns in a chess game.

I wonder if He wins. I wonder if He is ever checkmated.

After all, aren’t we the ones on trial?

 

He picked up our particles, gathered them together,

then kneaded them with the universe to make a paste.

 

He pierced our noses and inserted reins made of greed and lust

in order to pull us around the world like camels.

 

Who are we?

He put an oxen’s bell on the neck of the sky

and keeps crushing us under that sky as if we were sesame.

 

How lucky is that camel who has been tied by the halter of God’s Love.

He makes us drunk and excited while we are among the other camels.

Divan-i Kebir, Volume 15, Ghazal 6, verses 48-52, page 11.