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Ghazal 426
I am not
Muslims! What can I do? I have lost my identity!
I am not a Christian, Jew, pagan, or Muslim.
I am neither an Easterner nor a Westerner,
neither a land nor a sea person.
Nature can't fully account for me,
nor can the whirling cosmos.
I don't exclusively belong to earth, water, fire, or air.
I am not of the invisible-ineffable, nor of the dust--
I am not a process or a being.
I am not of this world or the next, and deserve
neither eternal reward nor eternal punishment.
I am not of Adam or Eve,
not of the original Garden nor the final one.
My home has no address; my tracks leave no trace.
I am neither body nor soul--What can I say?
I belong to the Self of the Beloved.
I have laid all "twos" aside:
this world and that world are one.
I search for One, I recognize One,
I see One clearly, and I call the name of the One.
That unnameable One, the breath of the breath,
is the first and last, the outside and the inside.
I identify no one except by "O That... O This!"
I am drunk on the cup of Love:
here-now and everywhere-all-time have vanished.
I can't handle any business except celebration.
If I spend an instant without you,
that instant makes my whole life seem worthless.
If I can win one moment with you,
I will crush both worlds under my feet
as I dance in joy forever.
My Beloved Shams-i-Tabriz, I am living permanently
intoxicated:
I have no more stories to tell except ones about drunks and
parties.
Jelaluddin Rumi, "The Diwan of Shams-i-Tabriz"
based on literal translation of number 31 in
"Selected Poems", R.A. Nicholson (1898, pp.124-127),
by Saadi Shakur Chisti (Neil Douglas-Klotz), in
"Desert Wisdom", pp.173, Harper Collins: New York (1995)
Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu,
Buddhist, Sufi or Zen. Not any religion
or cultural system.
I am not from the East or the West,
not out of the ocean or up from the ground,
not natural or ethereal,
not composed of elements at all.
I do not exist, am not an entity
in this world or the next,
did not descent from Adam and Eve
or any origin story.
My place is placeless,
a trace of the traceless.
Neither body or soul.
I belong to the Beloved,
have seen the two worlds as one
and that one call to and know,
first, last, outer, inner,
only that breath breathing human being.
Version by Coleman Barks
The Essential Rumi
Harper, 1995
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