A GREAT WAGON: When I see your face, the stones start spinning! You appear; all studying wanders. I lose my place. Water turns pearly. Fire dies down and doesn’t destroy. In your presence I don’t want what I thought I wanted, those three little hanging lamps. Inside your face the ancient manuscripts seem like rusty mirrors. You breathe; great shapes appear, and the music of a desire as widespread as Spring begins to move like a great wagon. Drive slowly, some of us walking alongside are lame! ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ No one is grown up except those free of desire. * * * Omar once had a friend, a Scientist, Bu'l-Hakam, who was flawless at solving empirical problems, but he could not follow Omar into the area of illumination and wonder. * * * Daylight, full of small dancing particles and the one great turning, our souls are dancing with you, without feet, they dance. Can you see them when I whisper in your ear? * * * Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absent-minded. Someone sober will worry about things going badly. Let the lover be. * * * The mystery does not get clearer by repeating the question, nor is it bought with going to amazing places. Until you've kept your eyes and your wanting still for fifty years, you don't begin to cross over from confusion. * * * Just because you can't drink all that falls doesn't mean you give up taking sips of rainwater. If the nut of the mystery can't be held, at least let me touch the shell. * * * A true person is more calm and deliberate. He or she doesn't worry about interruptions. * * * But listen to me for one moment, quit being sad. Hear blessings dropping their blossoms around you. God. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ * * * Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi, or simply Rumi (30 Sept. 1207 – 17 Dec. 1273), was a 13th-century Poet, Jurist, Islamic Scholar, Maturidi Theologian, and Sufi Mystic, originally from Greater Khorasan in Greater Iran. Rumi's works are widely read today in their original language across Greater Iran and the Persian-speaking world. His poems have subsequently been translated into many of the world's languages and transposed into various formats. Rumi has been described as the "most popular poet," is very popular in Turkey, Azerbaijan and South Asia, and has become the "bestselling poet" in the United States.