Translations of Rumi to Date

450 AK


Your scent has never left my nose.
Your face has never left my eyes.
All my life I've longed for you, night and day.
My life is now gone and only that longing is left.




1784 UT


How cruel to play a tanboor for the deaf,
to lodge Joseph with the blind,
to put sugar in the mouth of nausea
or a nymph in the bed of impotence.




1082 AK


For a while dwelling among men,
never catching a scent of grace, a tint of kindness,
so I made myself secret again,
water in iron, fire in stone.




1135 UT


Like a charmed snake, I'm twisting and turning.
Like a lock of the beloved's hair, I'm twisting and turning.
What kind of writhing this is, I swear I don't know.
But I know I'm nothing without twisting and turning.




656 AK


Like the River Oxus is the lover's heart's blood.
And the lover himself is froth on that flood.
Your body is a wheel and love is its water.
Can a mill wheel turn without water?





1227 AK


In every world I see an eye.
In every eye I see an world.
The cross-eyed see one as two--
as do you--but I see two as one.



700 AK


Samaa makes our hearts restless,
charged with the lightning of spring clouds.
O Venus of Pleasures, open your generous palm,
for hands are still and their drums are silent.


"Samaa" is a Sufi term for ceremonies involving prayer, song, and dance.  The rituals of the whirling dervishes are a kind of samaa most westerners have heard of.




232 AK


Don't speak of night, for our day never darkens.
Religion has love; but love, no religion.
Love is a shoreless sea, where many drown
without crying or calling to God. 

And Another Rumi

Samaa makes our hearts restless,
filled with the lightning of spring clouds.
O Venus of Pleasures, open your generous palm,
for hands are still and drums are silent.


"Samaa" is a Sufi term for ceremonies involving prayer, song, and dance.  The rituals of the whirling dervishes are a kind of samaa most westerners have heard of.

Another Rumi Rubai

In every world I see an eye.
In every eye I see an world.
The cross-eyed see one as two--
as do you--but I see two as one.

Its ragged end gone,
the old board still smells like pine
at the second cut.