The Epic of Sadness

Your love taught me to grieve
and I have been in need, for centuries
a woman to make me grieve
for a woman, to cry upon her arms
like a sparrow
for a woman to gather my pieces
like shards of broken crystal

Your love has taught me, my lady, the worst habits
it has taught me to read my coffee cups
thousands of times a night
to experiment with alchemy,
to visit fortune tellers

It has taught me to leave my house
to comb the sidewalks
and search your face in raindrops
and in car lights
and to peruse your clothes
in the clothes of unknowns
and to search for  your image
even…..even…..
even in the posters of advertisements
your love has taught me
to wander around, for hours
searching for a gypsies hair
that all gypsies women will envy
searching for a face, for a voice
which is all the faces and all the voices…

Your love entered me…my lady
into the cities of sadness
and I before you, never entered
the cities of sadness
I did not know…
that tears are the person
that a person without sadness
is only a shadow of a person…

Your love taught me
to behave like a boy
to draw your face with chalk
upon the wall
upon the sails of fishermen's boats
on the Church bells, on the crucifixes,
your love taught me, how love,
changes the map of time…
Your love taught me, that when I love
the earth stops revolving,
Your love taught me things
that were never accounted for
So I read children's fairytales
I entered the castles of Jennies
and I dreamt that she would marry me
the Sultan's daughter
those eyes..
clearer than the water of a lagoon
those lips…
more desirable than the flower of pomegranates
and I dreamt that I would kidnap her like a knight                                                      

and I dreamt that I would give
her necklaces of pearl and coral
Your love taught me, my lady,
what is insanity
it taught me…how life may pass
without the Sultan's daughter arriving

Your love taught me
How to love you in all things
in a bare winter tree,
in dry yellow leaves
in the rain, in a tempest,
in the smallest cafe, we drank in,
in the evenings…our black coffee

Your love taught me…to seek refuge
to seek refuge in hotels without names
in churches without names…
in cafes without names…

Your love taught me…how the night
swells the sadness of strangers
It taught me…how to see Beirut
as a  woman…a tyrant of temptation
as a woman, wearing every evening
the most beautiful clothing she possesses
and sprinkling upon her breasts perfume
for the fisherman, and the princes
Your love taught me  how to cry without crying
It taught me how sadness sleeps
Like a boy with his feet cut off
in the streets of the Rouche and the Hamra

Your love taught me to grieve
and I have been needing, for centuries
a woman to make me grieve
for a woman, to cry upon her arms
like a sparrow
for a woman to gather my pieces
like shards of broken crystal

Nizar Qabbani, translated by Diaa Hadid

A Mixed-Breed Apple

What colour am I? How does this go with the description? :s
Could someone please explain this for me?

A MIXED BREED APPLE

A little mixed-breed apple,
half red, half yellow,
tells this story.

A lover and beloved get separated
Their being apart was one thing,
but they have opposite responses.

The lover feels pain and grows pale.
The beloved flushes and feels proud.

I am a thorn next to my master's rose.
We seem to be two, but we are not.

[RUMI BRIDGE TO THE SOUL]

Rumi replenishes ...

Now I am sober and there's only the hangover and the memory of love. (Rumi)

Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment is intuition. (Rumi)

When you do things from your soul you feel a river moving in you, a joy. (Rumi)

Silence is an ocean. Speech is a river. When the ocean is searching for you, don't walk into the language-river. Listen to the ocean, and bring your talky business to an end. (Rumi)

This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet. (Rumi)

The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along. (Rumi)

-The Gift of Water

Every object and being in the universe is a jar overflowing with wisdom and beauty, a drop of the Tigris that cannot be contained by any skin. Every jarful spills and makes the earth more shining, as though covered in satin. (Rumi)

What is the body? That shadow of a shadow of your love, that somehow contains the entire universe. (Rumi)

Every tree and plant in the meadow seemed to be dancing, those which average eyes would see as fixed and still. (Rumi)

When I am with you, we stay up all night. When you're not here, I can't go to sleep. Praise God for those two insomnias! And the difference between them. (Rumi)

You are the deep innerness of all things, the last word that can be spoken. To each of us you reveal yourselves differently: to the ship as coastline, to the shore as ship. (Rumi)

This discipline and rough treatment are a furnace to extract the silver from the dross. This testing purifies the gold by boiling the scum away. (Rumi)

My comment:

Now I am sober and there's only the hangover and the memory of love.

Your Character and You

hubpages.com/hub/Your-Character-and-You

Man looks in the abyss, there’s nothing staring back at him. At that moment, man finds his character. And that is what keeps him out of the abyss.u201D; — Hal Holbrook, Wall Street

What is the abyss but a dark hole in existence in which nothing is and nothing escapes. This would be an equivalent to a black hole yet this black hole exists in our minds. A more real version of the abyss is something physical called a mirror. Many times someone looks into a mirror and does not recognize what they see or like the image they see. We often look into the abyss when we may be lost in a situation or even in ourselves.

We are forced to become someone. We are forced to do something about it. We are forced to develop character. Character is what we are defined by and who we appear to be in the eyes of others and of ourselves.

All too often we attempt to be someone else in order to make other happy with the character they perceive to be you. This will lead you down a path to utter and total confusion and unhappiness. There is a voice in your head. Some rarely listen to it and others have never even heard it. This voice speaks to you each day, helping you along your way and determining the right decisions which ultimately make up the idea of who you are in the eyes of others and of yourself. This voice is always correct as opposed to you wanting to do everything on your own.

Listen to this voice, learn from this voice, and you will always stay out of the abyss.

Happy New Year All

The transition of 31st December to 1st January is merely a change of the calender, the entire novelty of a New Year being in its metaphorical change. Lets pray that the Change is for the better, and lets aim to ensure that betterment in our own lives! A very Happy New Year to all of you! :)