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Masnavi III, 4159-65
Look at the chickpea in the pot,
how it leaps up when it feels the fire.
While boiling, it continually rises to the top
and cries, "Why are you setting the fire under me?
Since you bought me, why are you turning me upside down?"
The housewife keeps hitting it with the ladle.
"No!" she says, "boil nicely now,
and don’t leap away from the one who makes the fire.
It’s not because you are hateful to me that I boil you,
but so that you might gain flavor,
and become nutritious and mingle with essential spirit.
This affliction is not because you are despised.
When you were green and fresh,
you were drinking water in the garden:
that water-drinking was for the sake of this fire."
Rumi: Jewels of Remembrance
Threshold Books, 1996
Version by Camille and Kabir Helminski
Chickpea to Cook
A chickpea leaps almost over the rim of the pot
where it’s being boiled.
"Why are you doing this to me?"
The cook knocks him down with the ladle.
"Don’t you try to jump out.
You think I’m torturing you.
I’m giving you flavor,
so you can mix with spices and rice
and be the lovely vitality of a human being.
Remember when you drank rain in the garden.
That was for this."
Grace first. Sexual pleasure,
then a boiling new life beings,
and the Friend has something good to eat.
Eventually the chickpea
will say to the cook,
"Boil me some more.
Hit me with the skimming spoon.
I can’t do this by myself.
I’m like an elephant that dreams of gardens
back in Hindustan and doesn’t pay attention
to his driver. You’re my cook, my driver,
my way into existence. I love your cooking."
The cook says,
"I was once like you,
fresh from the ground. Then I boiled in time,
and boiled in the body, two fierce boilings.
My animal soul grew powerful.
I controlled it with practices,
and boiled some more, and boiled
once beyond that,
and became your teacher."
(Mathnawi III, 4160-68, 4197-4208)
Version by Coleman Barks
"The Essential Rumi"
Castle Books, 1997
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