A Year with Rumi: Daily Readings
Coleman Barks has played a central role in making the Sufi mystic Rumi the most popular poet in the world. A Year with Rumi brings together 365 of Barks's elegant and beautiful translations of Rumi's greatest poems, including fifteen never-before-published poems.\ Barks includes an Introduction that sets Rumi in his context and an Afterword musing on poetry of the mysterious and the sacred. Join Coleman Barks and Rumi for a year-long journey into the mystical and sacred within and without....
Search in google:
Coleman Barks has played a central role in making the Sufi mystic Rumi the most popular poet in the world. A Year with Rumi brings together 365 of Barks's elegant and beautiful translations of Rumi's greatest poems, including fifteen never-before-published poems. Barks includes an Introduction that sets Rumi in his context and an Afterword musing on poetry of the mysterious and the sacred. Join Coleman Barks and Rumi for a year-long journey into the mystical and sacred within and without. Join them in recognizing and embracing the divine in the sublime, in the ordinary, and in us all.
A Year with Rumi\ Daily Readings \ Chapter One\ January\ January 1\ A Just-Finishing Candle\ A candle is made to become entirely flame.\ In that annihilating moment it has no shadow.\ It is nothing but a tongue of light\ describing a refuge.\ Look at this\ just-finishing candle stub\ as someone who is finally safe\ from virtue and vice,\ the pride and the shame\ we claim from those.\ January 2\ A Single Brushstroke Down\ Light dawns, and any talk of proof\ resembles a blind man's cane at sunrise.\ Remember the passage,\ We are with you wherever you are.\ Come back to that.\ When did we ever leave it?\ No matter we're in a prison of forgetting\ or enjoying the banquet of wisdom,\ we are always inside presence.\ Drunkenly asleep, tenderly awake,\ clouded with grief, laughing like lightning,\ angry at war, quiet with gratitude, we are nothing\ in this many-mooded world of weather\ but a single brushstroke down,\ speaking of presence.\ *The word Allah in Arabic begins with a strong downward mark.\ January 3\ Children Running Through\ I used to be shy.\ You made me sing.\ I used to refuse things at table.\ Now I shout for more wine.\ In somber dignity, I used to sit\ on my mat and pray.\ Now children run through\ and make faces at me.\ January 4\ The Elegance of the Ermine\ Midnight, and a messenger comes from a prayer niche,\ someone as quiet as moonlight,\ yet with a torch that burns our sleeping.\ A king knocks on the doorkeeper's door\ and laughing, leads everyone out to a table.\ Our lips tremble at the cup, with the same trembling\ as a drop of mercury.\ The gentleness of the host is the same\ as that that made the elegance of the ermine.\ The dry and wet of a love affair,\ those tears are identical to the taking in\ and giving away of a waterwheel's turning.\ The keys that open all gates\ are strapped to love's chest.\ When a bird is completely broken and still,\ it gets removed from the snare.\ This list of rude likenesses\ does not come near saying what happens in our lives.\ January 5\ Birdwings\ Your grief for what you've lost lifts a mirror\ up to where you're bravely working.\ Expecting the worst, you look, and instead,\ here's the joyful face you've been wanting to see.\ Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.\ If it were always a fist or always stretched open,\ you would be paralyzed.\ Your deepest presence\ is in every small contracting and expanding,\ the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated\ as birdwings.\ January 6\ Sometimes I Do\ In your light I learn how to love.\ In your beauty, how to make poems.\ You dance inside my chest,\ where no one sees you,\ but sometimes I do,\ and that light becomes this art.\ January 7\ Don't Let Your Throat Tighten\ Don't let your throat tighten\ with fear. Take sips of breath\ all day and night, before death\ closes your mouth.\ January 8\ There Is Something in Us\ Imagine a man selling his donkey\ to be with Jesus.\ Now imagine him selling Jesus\ to get a ride on a donkey.\ This does happen.\ Jesus can transform a drunk into gold.\ If the drunk is already golden,\ he can be changed to pure diamond.\ If already that, he can become the circling\ planets, Jupiter, Venus, the moon.\ Never think that you are worthless.\ God has paid an enormous amount for you,\ and the gifts keep arriving.\ There is something in us\ that has nothing to do with night and day,\ grapes that never saw a vineyard.\ We are all returning\ says the Qur'an. Enjoy Shams,\ or if you cannot do that, at least\ consider what honest people tell you.\ January 9\ Gnats Inside the Wind\ Some gnats come from the grass to speak with Solomon.\ O Solomon, you are the champion of the oppressed.\ You give justice to the little guys, and they don't get\ any littler than us. We are tiny metaphors\ for frailty. Can you defend us?\ Who has mistreated you?\ Our complaint is against the wind.\ Well, says Solomon, you have pretty voices,\ you gnats, but remember, a judge cannot listen\ to just one side. I must hear both litigants.\ Of course, agree the gnats.\ Summon the East Wind, calls out Solomon,\ and the wind arrives almost immediately.\ What happened to the gnat plaintiffs? Gone.\ Such is the way of every seeker who comes to complain\ at the High Court. When the presence of God arrives,\ where are the seekers? First there's dying,\ then union, like gnats inside the wind.\ January 10\ A Piece of Wood\ I reach for a piece of wood. It turns into a lute.\ I do some meanness. It turns out helpful.\ I say one must not travel during the holy month.\ Then I start out, and wonderful things happen.\ January 11\ Backpain\ Muhammad went to visit a sick friend.\ Such kindness brings more kindness,\ and there is no knowing the proliferation from there.\ The man was about to die.\ Muhammad put his face close and kissed him.\ His friend began to revive.\ Muhammad's visit re-created him.\ He began to feel grateful for an illness\ that brought such light.\ And also for the backpain\ that wakes him in the night.\ No need to snore away like a buffalo\ when this wonder is walking the world.\ There are values in pain that are difficult\ to see without the presence of a guest.\ Don't complain about autumn.\ Walk with grief like a good friend.\ Listen to what he says.\ Sometimes the cold and dark of a cave\ give the opening we most want.\ January 12\ The Night Ocean\ We are the the night ocean filled\ with glints of light. We are the space\ between the fish and the moon,\ while we sit here together.\ A Year with Rumi\ Daily Readings. Copyright © by Coleman Barks. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
