The Sphere of the Moon

This earth and heaven are the Kingdom of God, this moon and Pleiades are our patrimony;

whatever thing meets your gaze upon this road, regard it with the eye of intimacy.

Go not about your own dwelling like a stranger— you who are lost to yourself, be a little fearless!

This and that impose your command on their hearts; if you say ‘Don’t do this, do that,’ they obey.

The world is nothing but idols of eye and ear; its every morrow will die like yesterday.

Plunge like a madman into the desert of the Quest that is to say, be the Abraham of this idol house!

When you have travelled all through earth and heaven, when you have traversed this world and the other,

seek from God another seven heavens, seek a hundred other times and spaces.

Self lost to sink on the bank of the river of Paradise, quit of the battle and buffetting of good and evil—

if our salvation be the cessation of searching, better the grave than a heaven of colours and scents.

Traveller! the soul dies of dwelling at rest, it becomes more alive by perpetual soaring.

Delightful it is to travel along with the stars, delightful not to rest one moment on the journey.

When I had tramped through the vastness of space that which was once above now appeared below me,

a dark earth loftier than the lamp of night, my shadow (O marvel! ) flung above my head;

all the while nearer and nearer still until the mountains of the Moon became visible.

Rumi said, ‘Cleanse yourself of all doubts, grow used to the manners and ways of the spheres.

The moon is far from us, yet it is our familiar; this is the first stage upon our road;

seen must be the late and soon of its time, seen must be the caverns of its mountains.’

That silence, that fearful mountain range, inwardly full of fire, outwardly riven and ravined!

A hundred peaks, such as Khaftin and Yildirim, smoke in their mouths and fire in their bellies;

out of its bosom not a blade of grass sprang, no bird fluttered in its empty spaces;

clouds without moisture, winds swift and sword sharp ever doing battle with a dead earth.

A worn out world without colour and sound, no sign of life therein, neither of death,

no root of the palm tree of life in its navel, no events hidden in the thighs of its time;

though it is a member of the family of the sun its dawn and evening beget no revolution.

Rumi said, ‘Rise, and take a step forward, do not let slip this wakeful fortune.

Its interior is fairer than its exterior, another world lurks hidden in its hollows.

Whatever presents itself to you, man of sense, seize it in the rings of the eye and the ear.

If the eye has vision, everything is worth seeing, worthy to be weighed in the glance’s balance.

Wheresoever Rumi leads, there go; be estranged a moment or two from all but he.’

Gently he drew my hand towards him, then swiftly he sped to the mouth of a crater.