Rumi on Love

One went to the door of the Beloved and knocked.

A voice asked, "Who is there?"

He answered, "It is I"

The voice said, "There is no room for Me and Thee ."

The door was shut.

After a year of solitude and deprivation he returned and

knocked .

A voice from within asked, "Who is there?"

The man said, "It is Thee ."

The door was opened for him .

(Jalaluddin Rumi)

Anwari, like the Western magician-poets of old, emphasizes

that the poet and lover shade into one another :

If to be a lover is to be a poet, I am a poet ;

If to be a poet is to be a magician, I am a magician ;

If to be a magician is to be thought evil, I can be

thought evil ;

If to be thought evil is to be disliked by worldlings, I

am content to be such .

Disliked by worldlings is to be a lover of the true reality,

more often than not .

I affirm that I am a Lover!

A Sufi poet of the seventeenth century says, in the Key of

the Afghans:

The arrow needs an archer, and poetry a magician .

He must ever hold in his mind the scales of meter, rejecting

the long and the short. Truth is his mistress,

astride a black steed, veiled in allegory. From beneath

her lashes shoot a hundred unerring glances . The poet

will decorate her fingers with multihued jewels, adorn

her with the perfume and scent of saffron metaphor .

Alliteration will ring like foot bells ; on her bosom will

be the mystery of concealed rhyme. Together with the

secrets of inner meaning, the concealing eyes, these

make her body a perfection of mystery.