[Sunlight] Look at the power of the Divine One -- Ghazel 3048

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      Today, Sunlight offers Rumi's Ghazal (Ode) 3048, in a
translation by Azima Melita Kolin and Maryam Mafi, and
in a version by John Moyne & Coleman Barks:

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You are the sky and I am the earth
astonished at what you grow inside my heart.
Dry-lipped and thirsty, only the grace of your rain
can turn the earth into a rose garden.
By you it is pregnant and only you know its burden.
It twists, it turns and sighs until
it gives birth to divine longing.

The Beloved takes care of his lovers
and feeds them generously.
Sometimes he ties them with the cord of reason
and sometimes he sets them free to dance.
Look at the meadow bursting with flowers
unable to contain its joy.
Look at the power of the Divine One
turning senseless dust into a sublime painting!
All we see is a veil of this never setting Sun,
this ancient Sun that will one day silently reveal
everything that has been planted.

       -- Translation by Azima Melita Kolin
          and Maryam Mafi
          Rumi: Hidden Music
          HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, 2001

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I feel like the ground, astonished
at what the atmosphere has brought to it. What I know
is growing inside me. Rain makes
every molecule pregnant with a mystery.
We groan with women in labor.
The ground cries out, I am Truth and Glory Is Here,
breaks open, and a camel is born out of it.
A branch falls from a tree, and there�s a snake.

Muhammed said: A faithful believer is a good camel,
always looking to its Master, who takes perfect care.
He brands the flank.
He sets out hay.
He binds the knees with reasonable rules,
and now he loosens all bindings and lets his camel dance,
tearing the bridle and ripping the blankets.

The field itself sprouts new forms,
while the camel dances over them, imaginary
plants no one has thought of,
but all these new seeds, no matter how they try,
do not reveal the other sun.
They hide it.
Still, the effort is joy,
one by one to keep uncovering
pearls in oyster shells.

         - Version by John Moyne & Coleman Barks
           These Branching Moments
           Copper Beech Press, 1988

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[Sunlight] Look at the power of the Divine One -- Ghazel 3048