Do Not Travel Alone - By Rumi
In our Religion the approved of thing is war and danger;
in the religion of Jesus it is flight to cave and mountain.
The Sunnah is the safest road,
and the community of the Faithful your best fellow-travellers.
The Way to God is full of trouble and bale:
it is not the way for any one whose nature is effeminate.
On this road mens's souls are tried by terror,
as a sieve is used for sifting bran.
If you go by yourself, I grant that you may manage to escape the wolf;
but you will feel no spiritual alacrity.
The ass, notwithstanding its grossness, is encouraged and strengthened,
O dervish, by comrades of its own kind.
How many more goadings and cudgellings does it suffer
when it crosses the desert without company!
It says to you implicitly, "Take good heed!
Don't travel alone unless you are an ass!"
In the grand scheme of things this is what finding a dusty, coverless book in a backroom in Pakistan leads to. Badly printed as it was, my uncle - when he heard me reading the poems to his children kindly pointed out that they were from Rumi, and although, clearly it was in english, there was no indication of the author. He also proceeded to recite them in urdu, and put the english to shame. (Things like this happen a lot in Pakistan.) Anyways, no idea who the pakistani translator was, enjoy the poem!
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