My heart became like a pen that’s in the Beloved’s fingers...by Rumi

My heart became like a pen
that’s in the Beloved’s fingers:

Tonight he may write a Z,
perhaps tomorrow, a B.

He cuts and prepares his pen well
to write in riqa and naskh;*

The pen says: “Lo, I obey,
for you know best what to do.”

Sometimes he blackens its face,
he wipes it then in his hair,

He holds it now upside down,
sometimes he writes with it too. . .

~ Rumi
Translation by Annemarie Schimmel
“I Am Wind, You are Fire”
Shambhala, 1992
*riqa and naskh: two styles of writing Persian.