A MOUSE AND A FROG, RUMI. TRANSLATION BY COLEMAN BARKS
A mouse and a frog meet every morning on the riverbank.
They sit in a nook of the ground and talk.
Each morning, the second they see each other,
they open easily, telling stories and dreams and secrets,
empty of any fear or suspicious holding back.
To watch and listen to those two
is to understand how, as it's written,
sometimes when two beings come together,
Christ becomes visible.
The mouse starts laughing out a story he hasn't thought of
in five years, and the telling might take five years!
There's no blocking the speechflow-river-running
all-carrying momentum that true intimacy is.
Bitterness doesn't have a chance
with those two.
The God-messenger, Khidr, touches a roasted fish.
It leaps off the grill back into the water.
Friend sits by Friend, and the tablets appear.
They read the mysteries
off each other's foreheads.
But one day the mouse complains, "There are times
when I want sohbet, and you're out in the water,
jumping around where you can't hear me.
We meet at this appointed time,
but the text says, Lovers pray constantly.
Once a day, once a week, five times an hour,
is not enough. Fish like we are
need the ocean around us!"
Do camel bells say, Let's meet back here Thursday night?
Ridiculous. They jingle
together continuously,
talking while the camel walks.
Do you pay regular visits to yourself?
Don't argue or answer rationally.
Let us die,
and dying, reply.
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