Open your eyes to the four streams
by Rumi, translated by Haleh Liza Gafori
Listen to an interview with the translator here.
Open your eyes to the four streams
flowing through you-
water, milk, honey, wine.
Pay no attention to what gossips say.
They call the wide-eyed flower jasmine.
They call the wide-eyed flower a thorn.
The wide-eyed flower doesn't care what they call it.
I Adore that freedom. I bow to it.
Some say you worship fire.
Some say you follow scripture.
What do they know?
Labels blind and tear us apart.
Your eyes are not a vulture's beak.
See through the Beloved's eyes.
See one when your mind says two.
The angels adore your Love-drunk eyes.
Open them
and dismiss the vicious judge
from the post you gave him.
Bow to a human
and greet the angel.
(Here's another version I found on the internet--always interesting to compare translations from languages I do not read!)
Your first eyes
of water, wine, honey and milk.
Find those in yourself and pay no attention
what so-and-so says about such-and-such.
The rose does not care
if someone calls it a thorn, or a jasmine.
Ordinary eyes categorize human beings.
That one is Zoroastrian. This one, Muslim.
Walk instead with the other vision given you, your first eyes.
Do not squint and do not stare blankly like a vulture.
Those who love fire fall in the fire.
A fly slips from the edge into the whey.
If you are in love with the infinite,
why grieve over the ground washing away in the rain?
Bow to the essence in a human being.
A desert drinks war-blood,
but if it knew this secret, springs would rise, rose gardens.
Do not be content with judging people good and bad.
Grow out of that. The great blessing is
that Shams has poured a strength into the ground
that lets us wait and trust the waiting.
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Version by Coleman Barks
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