A SAMPLING OF RUMI'S POEMS 

This Great Love Inside Me

I am so small I can barely be seen.
How can this great love be inside me?

Look at your eyes. They are small,
but they see enormous things.

Trans./Compiled by Coleman Barks. 
The Essential Rumi. Harper San Fransisco, 1997.

The Secret Turning

A secret turning in us
makes the universe turn.
Head unaware of feet,
and feet head. Neither cares.
They keep turning. 

Compiled by Coleman Barks, i.b.i.d.

This We Have Now

This we have now
is not imagination. 
This is not 
grief or joy. 
Not a judging state, 
or an elation, 
or sadness. 
Those come and go. 
This is the presence 
that doesn't.

Compiled by Coleman Barks, i.b.i.d.

The Day I've Died

The day I've died, my pall is moving on -
But do not think my heart is still on earth!
Don't weep and pity me: "Oh woe, how awful!"
You fall in devil's snare - woe, that is awful!
Don't cry "Woe, parted!" at my burial -
For me this is the time of joyful meeting!
Don't say "Farewell!" when I'm put in the grave -
A curtain is it for eternal bliss.
You saw "descending" - now look at the rising!
Is setting dangerous for sun and moon?
To you it looks like setting, but it's rising;
The coffin seems a jail, yet it means freedom.
Which seed fell in the earth that did not grow there?
Why do you doubt the fate of human seed?
What bucket came not filled from out the cistern?
Why should the Yusaf "Soul" then fear this well?
Close here your mouth and open it on that side.
So that your hymns may sound in Where- no-place!

Schimmel, Annemarie. Look! This Is Love: Poems of Rumi.
Boston, Mass.: Shambhala Publications, 1991.