Thursday, January 3, 2008

Unmarked Boxes

Don't grieve. Anything you lose comes round
in another form. The child weaned from mother's milk
now drinks wine and honey mixed.

God's joy moves from unmarked box to unmarked box,
from cell to cell. As rainwater, down into flowerbed.
As roses, up from the ground.
Now it looks like a plate of rice and fish,
now a cliff covered with vines,
now a horse being saddled.
It hides within these,
till one day it cracks them open.

Rumi

1 comment:

Simon Gregg said...

'A little river has to cross a desert, you see, and it runs into the sand. It finds it's becoming a marsh. So the wind says to it, "Come with me and I will carry you over the desert." But the little river says, "No, no, I can't! I'll lose my identity! I refuse to be turned into water vapor!" So the wind says, "Well, all right. But look at you. You're becoming a marsh. You have to decide whether you wish to become a marsh or become water vapor."

So after a great deal of consideration the river finally yields up to the wind, which carries it into the high mountains and drops it in the form of rain, whereafter it continues as a river.'