O lovers
Love will lay a carpet of treasures under your feet.
Musicians
Love will fill your drums with gold.
Thirsty ones
Love will turn your scorched desert
into a meadow of paradise.
Forsaken ones
Love will open the doors to the King's palace.
Alchemists
Love's alchemy will reshape gallows into altars.
Sinners
Love will change your apathy to faith.
Kings of the world
in love's hands you will melt like a candle.
To the parched lips of those who are
willing to surrender
Love will bring the wine that changes darkness
into vision, cruelty into compassion
and dust into precious incense.
Those who think the heart is only in the chest
take two or three steps and are content.
The rosary, the prayer rug and repentance
are paths that they mistake for the destination.
Rumi
Translation by Azima Melita Kolin
and Maryam Mafi
Rumi: Hidden Music
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, 2001
