Sorrow prepares you for joy.......by Rumi

Sorrow
prepares you for joy.

It violently sweeps 
everything out of your house,
so that new joy can find space to enter.

It shakes the yellow leaves
from the bough of your heart,
so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place.

It pulls up
the rotten roots,
so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow.

Whatever sorrow
shakes from your heart,
far better things will take their place.

~ Rumi

Our drunkenness does not come from wine...by Rumi

Our drunkenness 
does not come from wine. 

The joy of our gathering 
does not come from the harp or rubaab. 

With no celestial beauty to fill our cup,
Without friends, without singing, without wine,

We burst out like madmen,
rolling drunk on the floor.

~ Rumi
Version by Jonathan Star and Shahram Shiva
A Garden Beyond Paradise
Bantam Books, 1992

Ask the way to the Spring...by Rumi

When you do things from your soul,
you feel a river moving in you, a joy.

When actions come from another section,
the feeling disappears.

Don't let others lead you.
They may be blind,
or worse, vultures.

Reach for the rope of Love.
And what is that?
Putting aside self-will.

Because of willfulness people sit in jail.
From willfulness, the trapped birds' wings are tied.
From willfulness, the fish sizzles in the skillet.

The anger of police is willfulness. You've seen
a magistrate inflict visible punishment.
Now see the invisible.

If you could leave selfishness, you would see
how your soul has been tortured.

We are born and live inside black water in a well.
How could we know what an open field of sunlight is?

Don't insist on going
where you think you want to go.
Ask the way to the Spring.

Your living pieces will
form a harmony.

There is a moving palace that floats through the air,
with balconies and clear water running in every part of it,
infinity everywhere, yet contained under a single tent.

~ Rumi
Mathnawi, VI, 3487-3510
Version by Coleman Barks
"We Are Three,"
Maypop, 1987
Art by Marcia Baldwin