A Ripe Fig - Jellaludin Rumi

[Larry Robinson]

A Ripe Fig

Now that you live in my chest,
anywhere we sit is a mountaintop.

Those other things that entice people,
like porcelain dolls from China,
which have made people weep for centuries,
even those are changing now.

What used to be pain is now a lovely bench
where we sit under the roses.

A left hand has become a right.
a black wall, a window,
a cushion in a heel of a shoe,
a leader of an assembly.

Intelligence and silence.
What we say is poison to some,
nourishing to others.

What we say is a ripe fig,
but not all birds that fly eat figs.

	- Jellaludin Rumi
	(translation by Coleman Barks)