Vol. 6

Drain the cup — turn night to dawn, drive the world's grief from your head. The cup as instrument of transformation: not escape, but the conversion of grief into endurance.

Only You, Only You — the radical exclusivity of the ghazal's love, the beloved named as the singular fact of a life from which all other possibilities have been excluded.

I Am the Moon's Slave — Rumi's ecstatic ghazal of surrender: speak of nothing but the moon, nothing but candle and sugar. Love arrives in the night and commands silence; the speaker obeys.

Would I were a tulip sought in the desert — would my heart's wound were visible; would I were a fallen book in a silent corner; would I were a heading on the page of the age; would I were a candle burned from head to toe by others' glances.

When I closed the door at night and feasted drunkenly on pure wine — if the moon knocked, I answered; that Tartar enemy I called friend for a lifetime; I wept so much I ruined the dwelling; when I told the candle the moth's burnt-heart tale, I set it on fire then cooled it.

Watch so the wine does not spill — I sacrifice for your eyes, O cupbearer; treat the righteous with wine of Kawthar on condition they don't take my cup; a thousand repentances broken for a good cause; I stand helpless before your beauty — the world sees I am captive to your radiance.

A Mole at the Corner of the Lip — the beloved's beauty mark as focal point, the small physical detail that concentrates all of love's attention. Precision as a form of devotion.

The burning of my heart is eternal and the flood of my tears is crimson; O moon of the sky, constant among the planets — my eyes are your stars, I am helpless in your love, O nightingale of this gathering.

I Am Drunk and You Are Mad — Rumi's ghazal of double intoxication, both speaker and beloved outside the boundaries of sober social life, both beyond the reach of ordinary judgment.

Only the moth knows the burning of my heart; the nightingale does not know my grief; I do not lament because the beloved knows me as stranger; even my heart laughs at me and calls me mad.