Love is longing and longing, the pain of being parted....by Rumi

Love is longing and longing, the pain of being parted;
No illness is rich enough for the distress of the heart,
A lover's lament surpasses all other cries of pain.

Love is the royal threshold to God's mystery.
The carnival of small affections and polite attachments
Which litter and consume our passing time
Is no match to Love which pulses behind this play.

It's easy to talk endlessly about Love,
To live Love is to be seized by joy and bewilderment;

Love is not clear-minded, busy with images and argument.
Language is too precocious, too impudent, too sane
To stop the molten lava of Love which churns the blood,

This practicing energy burns the tongue to silence;
The knowing pen is disabled, servile paper

Shrivels in the fire of Love. Bald reason too is an ass
Explaining Love, deceived by spoilt lucidity.
Love is dangerous offering no consolation,

Only those who are ravaged by Love know Love,
The sun alone unveils the sun to those who have
The sense to receive the senseless and not turn away.

Cavernous shadows need the light to play but light
And light alone can lead you to the light alone.

Material shadows weigh down your vision with dross,
But the rising sun splits the ashen moon in empty half.

The outer sun is our daily miracle in timely
Birth and death, the inner sun
Dazzles the inner eye in a timeless space.

Our daily sun is but a working star in a galaxy of stars,
Our inner sun is One, the dancing nuance of eternal light.

You must be set alight by the inner sun,
You have to live your Love or else
You'll only end in words.

~ Rumi
Art by Diana Yanson