Don't Grieve

By Jalal al-Din Rumi.

Don't grieve.

Anything you lose comes round in another form.

The child weaned from mother's milk

now drinks wine and honey mixed.

God's joy moves from unmarked box to unmarked box,

from cell to cell. 

As rainwater, down into flower bed.

As roses, up from ground.

Now it looks like a plate of rice and fish,

now a cliff covered with vines, now a horse being saddled.

It hides within these, till one day it cracks them open.

Part of the self leaves the body when we sleep and changes shape.

You might say, "Last night I was a cypress tree,

a small bed of tulips, a field of grapevines." 

Then the phantasm goes away.

You're back in the room.

I don't want to make any one fearful.

Hear what's behind what I say.

Tatatumtum tatum tatadum

There's the light gold of wheat in the sun

and the gold of bread made from that wheat.

I have neither.

I'm only talking about them,

as a town in the desert looks up at stars on a clear night.

---translated by Coleman Barks