VII: Twenty Poems of Rumi

I picked up The Soul is Here for Its Own Joy this morning because I couldn't remember how the lines from Mirabi's The Music went. I found the lines, read them to the dog, and then flipped through until I discovered the twenty poems of Rumi. Now I have fallen in love with his poetry again. Perhaps I'll have to start a series of postings with Rumi poems.

The Mill, the Stone, and the Water

All our desire is a grain of wheat.
Our whole personality is the milling-building.
But this mill grinds without knowing about it.

The mill stone is your heavy body.
What makes the stone turn is your thought-river.
The stone says: I don't know why we do all this, but the river has knowledge!

If you ask the river, it says,
I don't know why I flow.
All I know is that a human opened the gate!

And if you ask the person, he says:
All I know, oh gobbler of bread, is that if this stone
Stops going around, there'll be no bread for your bread-soup!

All this grinding goes on, and no one has any knowledge!
So just be quiet, and one day turn
To God, and say: "What is this about bread-making?"

-Rumi