25.4.11

Rumi: Sufism





Only Breath



Read and translated by Coleman Barks

Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu
Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion


or cultural system. I am not from the East
or the West, not out of the ocean or up


from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not
composed of elements at all. I do not exist,


am not an entity in this world or in the next,
did not descend from Adam and Eve or any


origin story. My place is placeless, a trace
of the traceless. Neither body or soul.


I belong to the beloved, have seen the two
worlds as one and that one call to and know,


first, last, outer, inner, only that
breath breathing human being.