Lovers, lovers, I am mad; where is the chain? Chain-rattler of the soul, your clamor fills the world.
You have forged another chain and flung it upon my neck; you have galloped from heaven to waylay the caravan.
Rise, soul, from the world, fly from earth and earth’s plot; for our sake this torch is revolving in heaven.
He who is pained at heart, how shall his way be barred by rain and mud? That man is quit of love for whom mountain has not become a mustard grain.
One day a hermaphrodite cried, saying, “Wicked shepherd, why, that goat is biting me, he looked at me from the flock.”
The shepherd said, “He bites the hermaphrodite and perhaps slays him underfoot, but should that trouble a real man?” “You have spoken well,” said the other.
Where is your reason, if you speak? Where your foot to go running, to go from dry land to sea and become secure from the earthquake?
Then you will become king of kings, enter the ternal kingdorn, rise higher than the heaven, depart from this dunghill;
Active like the Universal Reason, surging like a sea of honey, like the sun in Aries, like the moon in Virgo.
A hundred crows and owls and doves are making melody in your ears; if only this clamor were less, you would hear the sounds of the heart.
If you are a man of heart, become without heart; if you have reason, become mad, for this partial reason is becoming a stye in the eye of your love,
So that the unseen form may arrive and draw you out of form—for this problem has become difficult through its tangled locks.
But on this road you must trail the skirt of joy because the stage is drenched with lovers’ blood.
Go, go, heart, with the caravan; go not alone on the stage because this pregnant age is giving birth to troubles;
There you will be freed from pains, and go in the protection of God; go in the sea like a skiff. Heart, you have gone; go without complaining.
When you have removed heart from soul, you have escaped from war and peace; you have become free and unconcerned with both shop and grain.
Your soul has escaped from anxiety, the road to dangers is barred; he who is attached to you, is always in forty day seclusion.
Since by day you have become secure from this uproarious Rumi, by night too do not worry about this jangling Zangi.
Be silent, sweet of presence; saki, bind up your waterskin, because the waves are not contained in pitcher and flagon.
