Beethoven Birthday & Rumi Urs

Since Beethoven's Birthday and Maulana Rumi's Urs fall almost at the same time, I found a poem with both of them in it. 

I am suspicious of the poems

that dont write themselves,

Though they may be inspired?

Why the hesitation?

What is wrong with them

The longing for the absolute seems to linger about and haunt the mystic.

Something has to be done.

As if nothing is any good unless

seen from way above.

Nothing is good enough

Everything should be better

if it is to be right.

Then it would just have to be left on the fire to smolder.

How high must the flames go

to burn up the self

Every day I start fires hoping to burn up all of the noise.

In the long search for quiet,

to become the motionless man.

It is a strange world we live in,

everywhere everyone is in motion,

but the goal of life is to be motionless.

Or is that just my perception?

Embers and ambers falling out of the fire and popping and crackling.

noise even from the fire.

Rumi says:

Light up a fire within your soul

Burn up these thoughts and words

From head to toe

(m2:1763)

To light the fire you need the fire wood of persian words.

I lock down my brain in urdu, persian and punjabi.

Stumbling on one word at a time

I fall into a dream

It only takes a single line to trip

that's the beauty of the hemistich

In four beats, followed by two, then three, then two and two, I fall off the earth.

4, 2, 3, 2,2

I cross five rivers and then swim

in a lake. The waves of the ocean roar in my ear. A song is being sung. Why generate thoughts when you could generate notes.

Crazy Beethoven was a note generator. So crazy he even scared the oxen with his notes and caused trouble on the farm.

Slow airs with grace notes on every note, tell a tale of Love.

Rumi says:

Listen

as this reed

pipes its plaint

Unfolds its tale

of separations:

Cut from my reedy bed,

my crying

ever since

makes men and women

weep

I like to keep my breast

carved with loss

to convey

the pain of longing-

Once severed

from the root,

thirst for union

with the source

endures

I raise my plaint

in any kind of crowd

in front of both

the blessed and the bad

For what they think they hear me say, they love me -

None gaze in me my secrets to discern

My secret is not separate from my cry

But ears and eyes lack light to see it.

Not soul from flesh

nor flesh from soul are veiled,

yet none is granted leave to see the soul.

Fire, not breath, makes music through that pipe.-

Let all who lack that fire be blown away.

It is love's fire that inspires the reed

It's love's ferment that bubbles in the wine

The reed, soother to all sundered lovers -

its piercing modes reveal our hidden pain:

(What's like the reed, both poison and physic,

Soothing as it pines and yearns away?)

The reed tells the tale of a blood-stained quest

singing legends of love's mad obsessions

Only the swooning know such awareness

only the ear can comprehend the tongue

In our sadness time slides listlessly by

the days searing inside us as they pass.

But so what if the days may slip away?

so long as you, Uniquely Pure, abide.

The Reed Song

Beshnow in nay chun shekayat mikonad ME 1:1-34

Mysteriously enough, the opening lines to the Masnavi tells the whole tale of the entire Masnavi

The Masters words worth repeating give a purpose to the iphone.

Where was i when Rumi came into

the picture, now i am lost again.

All is lost and continues to shrink

soon I will be gigantic

and wear a huge turban.

Walking on Gigantic Gaps in time

In these gigantic gaps time is stopped and our emergence from

these stop gaps is a rebirth.

With 300 sikh swordsmen I guard the pass, with almost continuous battle.

Every thought passing though is

chopped visciously to pieces

Thus peace is acheived.

After becoming masters of long time,

we can become fit to see the King.

It is ecstacy that stirs the pot and creates bubbles.

To heal the body be gone from it.

It likes you to be gone.

Even the donkey needs a rest.

All the world is in need of rest.

I once was a sad fisher boy but

when the King rode by all my sadness went away.

Now i am a boy thief stealing from Attar, Rumi and any other rich person.

In the future, I will mull over my poems until they are perfect.

But what is perfect?

I thought everything was perfect.

Thus, I am confused.

But, I need not worry about it,

because when Darshan sits,

on the Throne,

my verses line up like

willing slaves.

DS Poem June 15, 2014

Mystic Poem