DAILY POEMS FROM RUMI

Now sleeping, now awake, my heart is in constant fervour.
It is a covered saucepan, placed on fire.
O you! who have offered us form a cup a silencing wine;
Each moment a new tale is shouting to be told in silence.
In his wrath there are a hundred kindnesses, in his meanness a hundred generosities;
In his ignorance immeasurable gnosis, silently speaking like the mind. The words of those whom you have silenced, cannot hear but those whom you have made uncounscious;
I am both silent and fermenting for you like the sea of Aden!

(Divan 1808:6-9)

Translated by Fatemeh Keshavarz,
‘Reading Mystical Lyric: The Case of Jalal al-Din Rumi’,
University of South Carolina Press, 1998.