Once She opened up her shop of delicacies,
She tore the roof off my shop and put me out of 
    business. 

People say: “You shouldn’t be like that.”
I wasn’t like this—She made me like that. 

At first She broke the vat and the vinegar spilled; 
I worried that She took a loss on me. 

But for that one vat, She gave a hundred vats 
specially for me, and made me laugh. 

In Her furnace of pain and sacrifice 
She baked and toasted me like bread. 

I grew old like Zulaikha* from sorrow,
but a Joseph prayed for me, and I became young
    again. 

Like an arrow I would fly off His hand,
but He took me in hand and made me a bow. 

Now I fill heaven and earth with thankfulness,
for I was earth, and He turned me into heaven. 

My heart traveled the path of the galaxies, 
but He took me beyond the galaxies.

I saw plenty of ladders and roofs,
but He made me free from both ladder and roof.

When my fame spread throughout the world,
He hid me in the world like the soul within the body.

When He found me soft like a tongue, 
He translated me into a new language. 

I was a tongue connected to the heart,
and He revealed the secrets of the heart, one by one. 

But when my tongue began to shed blood l
ike a sword, He sheathed me. 

Stop, O heart! For what that tender Beloved did
can never be said in words.

* Zulaikha, the wife of an Egyptian ruler, attempted unsuccessfully to seduce the prophet Joseph. Her story is a well-known trope in Islamic literature. Eventually her unrequited love led her to com- munion with the Divine. 

By Jalaluddin Rumi (Divani Shamsi Tabrizi 971), translated by Kabir Helminski and Ahmad Rezwani, in Love’s Ripening: Rumi on the Heart’s Journey (Shambhala Publications, 2008)