Where Everything Is Music
~ by Rumi, translation by Coleman Barks
Don’t worry about saving these songs.
And if one of our instruments breaks, it doesn’t matter.
We have fallen into the place
where everything is music.
The strumming and the flute notes
rise into the atmosphere,
and even if the whole world’s harp should burn up,
there will still be hidden instruments playing.
So the candle flickers and goes out.
We have a piece of flint, and a spark.
This singing art is sea foam.
The graceful movements come from a pearl
somewhere on the ocean floor.
Poems reach up like spindrift
and the edge of driftwood along the beach, wanting.
They derive
from a slow and powerful root
that we cannot see.
Stop the words now.
Open the window in the center of your chest,
and let the spirits fly in and out.