Open the window of your heart.....by Rumi

Don’t worry about saving these songs!
And if one of our instruments breaks,
it doesn’t matter.

We have fallen into the place
where everything is music.

The strumming and the flute notes
rise into the atmosphere,
and even if the whole world’s harp
should burn up, there will still be
hidden instruments playing.

So the candle flickers and goes out.
We have a piece of flint, and a spark.

This singing-art is sea foam.
The graceful movements come from a pearl
somewhere on the ocean floor.

Poems reach up like the edge of driftwood
along the beach, wanting and wanting!

They derive
from a slow and powerful root
that we can’t see.

Stop the words now.
Open the window in the center of your chest,
and let the spirits fly in and out.

~ Rumi

– Version by Coleman Barks
(from a translation by John Moyne)
“Like This”
Maypop, 1990