Song of the Reed

Song of the Reed

Listen to the reed as it tells its tale;
it complains of separation.

Since they cut me from the reed-bed,
men and women have been crying over my lament.

I wish for someone with a bosom torn apart by separation,
so that I can tell them the meaning of the pain of longing.

Everyone who stays far away from his own origin
seeks to get back to the day he was together with it.

I have been crying in every gathering;
I have kept company with the miserable and the happy.

Everyone has thought he is my friend,
but no one has sought my inner secrets.

My secret is not far from my crying,
but neither eye nor ear has the light to find it.

Body from soul, soul from body are not veiled,
but no one has permission to see the soul.

This call of the reed is fire, not wind.
Everyone who has not this fire--should be naught.

The fire is love that came down into the reed;
its fervor is love that came down into the wine.

The reed is the companion of everyone parted from a beloved.
Its tunes have torn apart our veils.

Who has seen such a poison and antidote as the reed?
Who has seen such a sympathizer and longing lover as the reed?

The reed tells the tale of the Way full of blood.
It tells the love stories of Layla and Majnun.

No one but the delirious is intimate with this consciousness.
The tongue has no customer but the ear.

In our sorrow the days have become untimely.
The days accompany the burning griefs.

If the days are gone, tell them "Go!" and never mind.
But Thou, please stay, for none is as holy as Thou.

Everyone but the fish is fed up with his water.
For everyone without daily bread, his day is very long.

No one who is raw can understand the state of the cooked.
So the talk should be short. "That's all!"

... The Mathnawi of Jalaluddin Rumi