Soft Hands-Ali Ismael
Rumi & The Way of Spiritual Lover
This is Love
This is love: to fly toward a secret sky,
Heart, I said, what a gift it has been
I am a sculptor, a molder of form.
Because my soul has absorbed your fragrance,
Rumi
to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment.
First, to let go of life.
In the end, to take a step without feet;
to regard this world as invisible,
and to disregard what appears to be the self.
to enter this circle of lovers,
to see beyond seeing itself,
to reach and feel within the breast.
I am sculptor
Rumi
In every moment I shape an idol.
But then, in front of you, I melt them down
I can rouse a hundred forms
and fill them with spirit,
but when I look into your face,
I want to throw them in the fire.
My souls spills into yours and is blended.
I cherish it.
Every drop of blood I spill
informs the earth,
I merge with my Beloved
when I participate in love.
In this house of mud and water,
my heart has fallen to ruins.
Enter this house, my Love, or let me leave.
When the rose is gone
When the rose is gone and the garden faded
If love withholds its strengthening care,
How will I be awake and aware
Because I cannot sleep
Rumi
you will no longer hear the nightingale's song.
The Beloved is all; the lover just a veil.
The Beloved is living; the lover a dead thing.
the lover is left like a bird without care,
the lover is left like a bird without wings.
if the light of the Beloved is absent?
Love wills that this Word be brought forth.
Because I cannot sleep
Rumi
I make music at night.
I am troubled by the one
whose face has the color of spring flowers.
I have neither sleep nor patience,
neither a god reputation nor disgrace.
A thousand robes of wisdom are gone.
All my good manners have moved a thousand miles away.
The heart and the mind are left angry with each other.
The starts and the moon are envious of each other.
Because of this alienation the physical universe
is getting tighter and tighter.
The moon says, "How long will I remain
suspended without a sun?"
Without Love's jewel inside of me,
let the bazaar of my existence by destroyed stone by stone.
O Love, You who have been called by a thousand names,
You who know how to pour the wine
into the chalice of the body,
You who give culture to a thousand cultures,
You who are faceless but have a thousand faces,
O Love, You who shape the faces
of Turks, Europeans, and Zanzibaris,
give me a glass from Your bottle,
or a handful of bheng from Your Branch.
Remove the cork once more.
Then we'll see a thousand chiefs prostrate themselves,
and a circle of ecstatic troubadours will play.
Then the addict will be freed of craving.
and will be resurrected,
and stand in awe till Judgement Day.