What Hurts the Soul ? .....by Rumi

What Hurts the Soul?

We tremble thinking 
we’re about to dissolve
into non-existence

but non-existence fears even more 
that it might be given human form!

Loving God is the only pleasure.
Other delights turn bitter.

What hurts the soul?
To live without tasting
the water of its own essence.

People focus on death 
and this material earth.

They have doubts about soul-water.
Those doubts can be reduced!

Use night to wake your clarity.
Darkness and the living water are lovers.
Let them stay up together.

When merchants eat their big meals 
and sleep their dead sleep, 
we night-thieves go to work.

~ Rumi 
(What Hurts the Soul?)
From Rumi’s Mathnavi 
A version by Coleman Barks
Printed in “Say I Am You”
Maypop, 1994