Taken From Rumi-On Baking Bread
….He went out, and there, near the latrine,
was a beautiful woman, one of the king’s harem.
His mouth hung open. He wanted her!
Right then, he wanted her!
And she was not unwilling.
They fell to, on the ground.
You’ve seen a baker rolling dough.
He kneads it gently at first,
then more roughly.
He pounds it on the board.
It softly groans under his palms.
Now he spreads it out
and rolls it flat.
Then he bunches it,
and rolls it all the way out again,
thin. Now he adds water,
and mixes it well.
Now salt,
and a little more salt.
Now he shapes it delicately
to its final shape
and slides it into the oven,
which is already hot.
You remember breadmaking!
This is how your desire
tangles with a desired one.
And it’s not just a metaphor
for a man and a woman making love.
Warriors in battle do this too.
A great mutual embrace is always happening
between the eternal and what dies,
between essence and accident.
The sport has different rules
in every case, but it’s basically
the same, and remember:
the way you make love is the way
God will be with you.
So these two were lost in their sexual trance.
They did not care anymore about feasting
or wine. Their eyes were closed like
perfectly matching calligraphy lines.
The king went looking for the scholar,
and when he saw them there coupled, commented,
“Well, as it is said, ‘A good king
must serve his subjects from his own table!'”
There is joy, a winelike freedom
that dissolves the mind and restores
the spirit, and there is manly fortitude
like the king’s, a reasonableness
that accepts the bewildered lostness.
But meditate now on steadfastness
and clarity, and let those be the wings
that lift and soar through the celestial spheres.
–The Essential Rumi –pages 183-185
Tags: authors, love, poetry, publicist nyc, publicity nyc, Rumi, sherri rosen publicity nyc
This entry was posted on Sunday, January 9th, 2011 at 10:29 am and is filed under Friends and Colleagues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
