12.07.2011
& on feelings posted at 12/07/2011 04:16:00 PM
Dissolver of Sugar
Rumi
Dissolver of sugar, dissolve me,
if this is the time.
Do it gently with a touch of a hand, or a look.
Every morning I wait at dawn. That's when it's happened before. Or do it suddenly
like an execution. How else
can I get ready for death?
You breathe without a body like a spark.
You grieve, and I begin to feel lighter.
You keep me away with your arm,
but the keeping away is pulling me in.
Pale sunlight,
pale the wall.
Love moves away.
The light changes.
I need more grace
than I thought.
****
Rumi has always held a soft spot in my heart, despite Islamic scholars saying that, "no, it isn't about homosexual love," and it's so easy to ignore those facts because Rumi writes in a very non-gendered way, and it's love in it's purest form.
I first encountered Rumi in class, and ignored his poetry in favor of a Sylvia Plath one, after the class, I re-read him and wondered if he was Middle Eastern. Months later, I broke up with my college boyfriend, and in the middle of pulling me out of running myself into a wreck, my mentor, Ricci, pulls out a thick volume of Rumi from her carpet bag randomly. In the middle of our conversation she says, "Babe, I really want you to read this. I want you to read and understand Rumi the way you have to understand Neruda--with painstaking slowness, detail, each word scrutinised and felt."
I asked her why, and she said, "I think you'll understand what I mean when you read him." I returned the volume to her after glancing at it, and when I got home I started looking for a complete volume of Rumi's poetry--and slowly, painfully, I got a glimpse of understanding.
These days, Rumi always comforts me, calms me down. He understands the kind of love that wishes to give but cannot.
Labels: love, poetry, sad
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