Categories
Poetry

Rumi – The Many Wines

God has given us a dark wine so potent that, drinking it, we leave the two worlds.

God has put into the form of hashish a power to deliver the taster from self-consciousness.

God has made sleep so that it erases every thought.

God made Majnun love Layla so much

that just her dog would cause confusion in him.

There are thousands of wines that can take over our minds.

Don’t think all ecstasies are the same!

Jesus was lost in his love for God. His donkey was drunk on barley.

Drink from the presence of saints, not from those other jars.

Every object, every being, is a jar full of delight.

Be a connoisseur, and taste with caution.

Any wine will get you high. Judge like a king, and choose the purest,

the ones unadulterated with fear, or some urgency about “what’s needed.”

Drink the wine that moves you as a camel moves when it’s been untied, and is just

ambling about.