The Skylark's Song

Rumi Poem (English) - Emptiness Mawlana Jalaladdin Mohammad Balkhi, popularly known as "Rumi", is a 13th century Sufi poet. His poems have touched the hearts of over a billion people. Voice...

I am lost in the thoughts of my beloved, I do not know where I am going
I find myself drowned in the moment of meeting my beloved, I do not know where I am going

"The man who said, 'It is I'"


A CERTAIN man once came and knocked on on the door of a friend.

'Who are you, faithful one?' his friend asked.

'I,' he answered.

'Go away', the friend said. 'It is not the proper time. There is no place for such a raw fellow at a table like mine.'

What shall cook the raw, but the fires of banishment and separation? What shall deliver him out of hypocrisy?

That wretched man departed and wandered abroad for a year, burned as with sparks of fire in separation from his friend. So, scorched, he was cooked; then he returned and once more circled about the house of his companion. Fearful a hundredfold, he gently knocked at the door, anxious lest any unmannerly word should escape his lips.

His friend called, 'Who is that at the door?'

He answered, 'You also are at the door, heart-ravisher!'

'Now,' the friend cried, 'since you are I, come in. O I! There is no room in the house for two I's.'

http://rumiurdu.blogspot.com/

Masnavi Rumi Poetry (مثنوی مولانا جلال الدین رومی) Masnavi/Mathnawi Poety, Farsi Shayari, Sufi/Mystical Poetry, Poems, Stories, couplet, stanza, shair, poet, Tale/Hikayat

A story from Rumi's musnavi...
'The jackal that pretended to be a peacock'

A JACKAL once got into a dyeing-vat and there tarried for a space. Then he got out again, and his skin was stained with the dye.
'See, I have become the Peacock of Heaven's Heights!' he cried.
Indeed, his dyed fur had acquired a delightful sheen, and when the sun shone upon those colours he beheld himself green and crimson, russet and gold. So he displayed himself to the other jackals.
'Little jackal,' they all exclaimed, 'what is the matter? Why is your head full of such perverse glee? You have gone apart form us in your exultation; what is the ground for your high disdain?'
'You here,' one of the jackals went up to him and cried, 'are you a pretender, or is your heart truly joyous? You have perpetrated a fraud so as to jump up on the pulpit and with your vainglory make all the people envious. You have laboured much but experienced no true ardour, so you have displayed a fraudulent piece of impudence.'
The multicoloured jackal slunk up quietly and whispered into the ear of the reprover.
'Why, just look at me! Look at my colours! No idolater possesses an idol like me. I have become lovely and many-hued as the garden. Do not turn your head form em: bow down before me! See my pomp and splendour, my sheen, my glitter, my colour! Call me the Pride of the World, the Pillar of the Faith! I have become the theatre of the grace Divine, I have become the tablet expounding the majesty of God. You jackals, beware! Do not call me a jackal; how should a jackal possess so much beauty?
The jackals gathered about him like months around a candle.
'Say, what shall we call you then, creature of pure substance?'
'Peacocks of the Spirit,' they then said to him, 'hold displays in the Garden of Roses. Do you make such a display?'
'No,' he replied. 'How should I tread the streets of Mina, never having gone into the desert?'
'Do you utter the peacocks' cry?'
'No,' he answered.
'Then you are not a peacock, father of lofty airs! The glory-robe of the peacock is the gift of heaven; how should you ever attain to it by means of dyes and false pretences?'