Warriors with no shields, musicians with no pipes

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Sunlight offers Ghazal (Ode) 2942, in an interpretive version by
Coleman Barks, and in translation by A.J. Arberry:

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"Ashes, Wanderers"

In this battle we do not hold
a shield in front to us. When

we turn in sama, we do not hear
the flute or the tambourine.

Underneath these feet we become
nazar, the guide's glance, ashes,

wanderers: as the moon diminishes
every day and then it's gone, to

come back changed. Send for the
planet Venus to play here! Flute,

drum, and strings are not enough.
No. Who but these musicians could

stand the heat that melts the sun?

-- Version by Coleman Barks, with Nevit Ergin
"The Glance"
Viking-Penguin, 1999

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In the battle ranks we have no shield before our face; in the
concert we are unaware of reed pipe and tambourine.
We are naught in his love, dust at the foot of his love; we are
love fold upon fold, we are all love, nothing else.
When we have obliterated ourselves we become altogether
love; when sormah is pounded, it is nothing but the source of
sight.
Every body that has become an accident has become the soul
and heart of self-interest; melt of all sickness, there is nothing
worse than being congealed.
Out of desire of that melting and love for that cherishing the
liver within me has turned all to blood; I have no liver any more.
My heart is broken into a hundred pieces, my heart has become
astray; today if you search, there is no trace of heart in me.
Look at the orb of the moon, waning every day, so that in the
dark period you might say there is no moon in the sky.
The changelessness of that moon derives from nearness to the
sun; when afar, it is full-bodied, but such initiative does not
belong to it.
O king, for the sake of the soul send Venus as a minstrel;
this soft pipe and tambourine are no match for the concert of
the souls.
No, no--for what is Venus when the Sun itself is powerless?
To be suitable for such ardor is not in the power of any lute or
sun.

-- Translation by A.J. Arberry
"Mystical Poems of Rumi 2"
University of Chicago Press, 1979

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Warriors with no shields, musicians with no pipes