That Rumi Sure Had a Way With Words...

Photo Courtesy of Victorian Traditions

I've been trying to put my mood into words these days, and I can't do any better than this:


Fastened to a Pole
by Rumi

I keep turning around this misfortune,
this troubled illusion I call myself,

when I could be turning around you,
the giver of blessings, origin and

presence. My chest is a grave you
made a rose garden. What goes in the

grave? What fits in that two-by-two-
by-seven? Not a soul, soul cannot be

contained by the sky! I turn around
God. I have become a mirror, yet I

turn for these few days around a piece
of white wool. If I were a rose in

this spring, I would change into a
hundred rose bushes. I turn around this

frustrated body, tethered in a barn
of words, when I could be free in the

infinite pasture. Free, why do I keep
turning as though fastened to a pole?