One Strand at a Time

Once more,
Love is pouring down my ceiling
and my walls.
Once more,
the lion of Love is revealing its
deadly claws
and my deer-like heart is thirsting for blood.
Once more, it's the night of the full moon,
it is time for madness.
All my immense knowledge
cannot help me now.
Once more,
Love has created another revolt in my body,
and yet a new flame was placed in
my heart.
The awakened sweetheart has rubbed my sleep away.
Insomnia took my patience.
Rain washed away my intellect.
The Lover made me lose my profession.
What good is my work anyway?
You wonder about the lineage of the Lovers,
let me tell you about it.
Look at my Lover's hair,
see those luminous strands,
they are all in there,
one strand at a time.
Once more, rise, rise, rise,
resurrection time is here.
Oh, the Beloved,
bathe me in the essence of
a hundred resurrections.
Like the way a garden burns
in a hundred shades of orange in the fall,
a Lover's heart shrivels for a sense of the Beloved's touch.
Now the face of that charred garden
is my field of flowers.
The garden of the world is burnt,
but the garden of the heart is resurrected.
The secret of that garden may be burnt,
but the secret of the heart is resurrected.
The time of ecstasy has come,
oh my prisoned body.
The garb of health has arrived,
oh my frail heart.
Look, two hundred Jupiters
are dancing around my moon.
Oh the wise man of the ruins,
how can I ever repay this?
Give away my
cloak, my garb and headdress.
What value can these have
when the soul of the universe
is but a gulp for my drunken sweetheart?
My Love business is booming,
but don't credit the consultants.
I am done with the consultants
and the pundits,
they call you Jafar the Imposter.
Little do they know,
that you are my Shams the Flyer.

Moulana Jalaluddin Rumi