Rumi and Hafiz on love

"TIRED OF SPEAKING SWEETLY," by Hafiz


Love wants to reach out and manhandle us,
Break all our teacup talk of God.
If you had the courage and
Could give the Beloved His choice, some nights,
He would just drag you around the room
By your hair,
Ripping from your grip all those toys in the world
That bring you no joy.
Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly
And wants to rip to shreds
All your erroneous notions of truth
That make you fight within yourself, dear one,
And with others,
Causing the world to weep
On too many fine days.
God wants to manhandle us,
Lock us inside of a tiny room with Himself
And practice His dropkick.
The Beloved sometimes wants
To do us a great favor:
Hold us upside down
And shake all the nonsense out.
But when we hear
He is in such a "playful drunken mood"
Most everyone I know
Quickly packs their bags and hightails it
Out of town.


"THE SILENT ARTICULATION OF A FACE," by Rumi

Love comes with a knife,
not some shy question,
and not with fears
for its reputation!

I say these things disinterestedly.
Accept them in kind.

Love is a madman, working his wild schemes, tearing off his clothes,
running through the mountains, drinking poison,
and now quietly choosing annihilation.

A tiny spider tries to wrap an enormous wasp.
Think of the spiderweb woven across the cave
where Muhammad slept!

There are love stories,
and there is obliteration into love.

You've been walking the ocean's edge,
holding up your robes to keep them dry.
You must dive naked under and deeper under,
a thousand times deeper!

Love flows down!!
The ground submits to the sky and suffers
what comes.

Tell me, is the earth worse
for giving in like that?
Don't put blankets over the drum!
Open completely.
Let your spirit-ear listen to the green dome's passionate murmur.]

Let the cords of your robe be untied.
Shiver in this new love beyond all above and below.

The sun rises, but which way
does night go?

I have no more words. Let soul speak with the silent
articulation of a face.