“The Shape of My Tongue”
This mirror inside me shows . . .
I can’t say what, but I can’t not know!
I run from body. I run from spirit.
I do not belong anywhere.
I’m not alive!
You smell the decay?
You talk about my craziness.
Listen rather to the honed-blade sanity I say.
This gourd head on top of a dervish robe,
do I look like someone you know?
This dipper gourd full of liquid,
upsidedown and not spilling a drop!
Or if it spills, it drops into God
and rounds into pearls.
I form a cloud over that ocean
and gather spillings.
When Shams is here,
I rain.
After a day or two, lilies sprout,
the shape of my tongue.
— Version by Coleman Barks from the “The Essential Rumi”
Courtesy Sunlight Ruminations
