If I flinched at every grief, I
would be an intelligent idiot.  If

I were not the sun, I’d ebb and
flow like sadness.  If you were not

my guide, I’d wander lost in Sanai.
If there were no light, I’d keep

opening and closing the door.  If
there were no rose garden, where

would the morning breezes go?  If
love did not want music and laughter

and poetry, what would I say?  If
you were not medicine, I would look

sick and skinny.  If there were no
leafy limbs in the air, there would

be no wet roots.  If no giftes were
given, I’d grow arrogant and cruel.

If there were no way into God, I
would not have lain in the grave of

this body so long.  If there were no
way from left to right, I could not

be swaying with the grasses.  If
there were no grace and no kindness,

conversation would be useless, and
nothing we do would matter.  Listen

to the new stories that begin every
day.  If light were not beginning

again in the east, I would not now
wake and walk out inside this dawn.

Rumi

(from The Soul of Rumi: a new collection of ecstatic poems

translated by Coleman Barks)