This World Which Is Made of Our Love for Emptiness...by Rumi

This World Which Is Made of Our Love for Emptiness 
Praise to the emptiness that blanks out existence. Existence: 
This place made from our love for that emptiness! 

Yet somehow comes emptiness, 
this existence goes. 
Praise to that happening, over and over!

For years I pulled my own existence out of emptiness.
Then one swoop, one swing of the arm,
that work is over.

Free of who I was, free of presence,
free of dangerous fear, hope,
free of mountainous wanting.

The here-and-now mountain
is a tiny piece of a piece of straw
blown off into emptiness.

These words I'm saying so much begin to lose meaning:
Existence, emptiness, mountain, straw:

Words and what they try to say swept
out the window, down the slant of the roof.

~ Rumi
Ode 950
Version by Coleman Barks
"Open Secret"
Threshold Books, 1984
Art by Sergey Noskov