Empty the Glass of Your Desire ....by Rumi

Join yourself to friends
and know the joy of the soul.
Enter the neighborhood of ruin
with those who drink to the dregs.

Empty the glass of your desire
so that you won’t be disgraced.
Stop looking for something out there
and begin seeing within.

Open your arms if you want an embrace.
Break the earthen idols and release the radiance.
Why get involved with a hag like this world?
You know what it will cost.

And three pitiful meals a day
is all that weapons and violence can earn.
At night when the Beloved comes
will you be nodding on opium?

If you close your mouth to food,
you can know a sweeter taste.
Our Host is no tyrant. We gather in a circle.
Sit down with us beyond the wheel of time.

Here is the deal: give one life
and receive a hundred.
Stop growling like dogs,
and know the shepherd’s care.

You keep complaining about others
and all they owe you?
Well, forget about them;
just be in His presence.

When the earth is wide,
why are you asleep in a prison?
Think of nothing but the source of thought.
Feed the soul; let the body fast.

Avoid knotted ideas;
unite yourself in a higher world.
Limit your talk
for the sake of timeless communion.

Abandon life and the world,
and find the life of the world.

 ~ Rumi
(Empty the Glass of Your Desire )
Ghazal 2577
From Love Is a Stranger
Trans by Kabir Helminski