If you were not my medicine.....by Rumi

If I flinched at every grief, 
I would be an intelligent idiot. 

If I were not the sun, 
I'd ebb and flow like sadness. 

If you were not my guide,
I'd wander lost in Sanai.

If you were no my light,
I'd keep opening and closing the door.

If there were no rose garden,
where would the morning breezes go?

If love did not want music and laughter
and poetry, what would I say ?

If you were not my medicine,
I would look sick and skinny.

If there were no leafy limbs in the air,
there would be no wet roots.

If no gifts were given,
I'd grow arrogant and cruel.

If there were no way into God,
I would not have lain in the grave of this body so long.

If there were no way from left to right,
I could not be swaying with the grasses.

If there were no grace and no kindness,
conversation would be useless, and
nothing we do would matter.

Listen to the new stories
that begin every day.

If light were not beginning again in the east,
I would not now wake
and walk out inside this dawn.

~ Rumi
Trans by Coleman Barks
From "The Soul of Rumi"