Rumi – The Real Threat … Nothingness

Rumi’s poem The Real Threat … Nothingness.

Shunyata.

Emptiness.

Just so.

If it escapes, the lover’s breath, and strikes the universe of fire,

That universe without origin, it will dissolve into particles.

The entire universe becomes sea, out of fear that the sea will turn to nothing.

Neither man nor humanity remain when man is struck.

A pillar of smoke rising to the sky, neither people nor angel remain,

And from that smoke suddenly he strikes the great roof with fire.

The moment when the sky is rent: neither being nor place remains,

A movement in the universe strikes mourning with celebration.

Sometimes it is fire that takes the water, sometimes the water that devours fire,

From the sea of nothingness the waves strike the black or the white.

The sun becomes infinitely small in the light of mankind’s breath.

Expect nothing from the uninitiated, where the initiate is so humble.

Mars has lost virility, Jupiter’s book is on fire,

No more majesty for the Moon, and its joy beats a melancholy rhythm.

Mercury falls in the mud, Saturn is wrapped in flames,

Venus has lost its bile and beats a joyful rhythm.

There is no rainbow, no sky, there is no wine, no cup,

No pleasure or joy, and the balm is struck by no wound.

Water will make no patterns, the wind no longer sweep,

The garden will not shout: joy to you; cloud of April: not a drop.

There is no pain, no cure, no enemy, no witness,

No flute, no rhythm, no lyre beating the sharps and flats.

All causes are annihilated, the wine steward serves himself,

The breath says, “Oh my great God!” and the heart says, “Oh God who knows!”

Rumi
(translation from Rumi: The Fire of Love, by Nahal Tajadod)

Original source: Duckworth Books