3_rumi

THE SEARCH OF RUMI

I searched among the Christians. I stood by the gaunt cross.
I found splintered wood, rusting nails, heard only the jabber

of dicing men. I looked for Him in the ancient temples;
found only false light flickering on altar cloths, painted eyes,

candle wax. I climbed the holy mountains of Herat and Kandahor.
There was a mist. I saw blurred tracks, time-strewn rocks, slate

mottled with lichen. In the city of Konia I asked the priests.
They chanted canonical texts – there was ink on their finger-tips,

dust on their cassocks. At the Universities I asked the philosophers.
They questioned my tenets. Our logic fell into infinite regress.

They shrugged their shoulders. Nothing is certain, they said, grinning
the grin of the dead. They could neither grasp my impulse to bless,

nor credit my anguish. And then I was tossed into the furnace of life;
I was burnt down: a speck of ash in the insurrection of fire.

After aeons of time, I came back to dance on the spinning wheel:
Shiva, Muhammad, Christ – the blind girl on the corner of the street.