Jalaluddin Rumi Poems

Rumi poems are a blend of wisdom, love, and spiritual reflections. Rumi, known as Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī, was a 13th-century Persian poet.

Even though Rumi lived a long time ago, his poems feel like they could have been written yesterday. Love is a big theme in Rumi poems.

He speaks about love not just romantically but also as a force that connects all living things. Rumi poems are filled with the power of love.

He wrote things that are forever true and relevant, crossing time and cultures. Rumi encourages us to accept ourselves and others.

People from all over the world love and understand them. Let’s read some of the Rumi poems and enjoy

Hundred Kinds Of Prayer

Today, like every day, we are ruined, ruined (by “wine”).
Don’t open the door of worry, but take up the lute!
There are a hundred kinds of prayer, bowing, and prostration6
For the one whose prayer-niche, is the beauty of the Beloved

Lifetime

Any lifetime that is spent without seeing the master
Is either death in disguise or a deep sleep.
The water that pollutes you is poison;
The poison that purifies you is water.

Last Night

Last night you left me and slept
your own deep sleep. Tonight you turn
and turn. I say,
“You and I will be together
till the universe dissolves.”
You mumble back things you thought of
when you were drunk.

In Love

In love, aside from sipping the wine of timelessness,
nothing else exists.
There is no reason for living except for giving one’s life.
I said, “First I know you, then I die.”
He said, “For the one who knows Me, there is no dying.”

Out Of Your Love

Out of your love the fire of youth will rise.
In the chest, visions of the soul will rise.
If you are going to kill me, kill me, it is alright.
When the friend kills, a new life will rise.

I See Myself

I see so deeply within myself.
Not needing my eyes, I can see everything clearly.
Why would I want to bother my eyes again
Now that I see the world through His eyes?

You Personify God’s Message.

You reflect the King’s face.
There is nothing in the universe that you are not
Everything you want, look for it within yourself–
you are that.

Until You Have Found Pain

Until you’ve found pain, you won’t reach the cure
Until you’ve given up life, you won’t unite with
the supreme soul
Until you’ve found fire inside yourself, like the Friend,
You won’t reach the spring of life, like Khezr.

Bad Dreams

One day you will look back and laugh at yourself.
You’ll say, ‘ I can’t believe I was so asleep!
How did I ever forget the truth?
How ridiculous to believe that sadness and sickness
Are anything other than bad dreams.

This Aloneness

This aloneness is worth more than a thousand lives.
This freedom is worth more than all the lands on earth.
To be one with the truth for just a moment,
Is worth more than the world and life itself.

I Throw It All Away

You play with the great globe of union,
you that see everyone so clearly
and cannot be seen. Even universal
intelligence gets blurry when it thinks
you may leave. You came here alone,
but you create hundreds of new worlds.
Spring is a peacock flirting with
revelation. The rose gardens flame.
Ocean enters the boat. I throw
it all away, except this love for Shams.

I Swear

I swear, since seeing Your face,
the whole world is fraud and fantasy
The garden is bewildered as to what is leaf
or blossom. The distracted birds
can’t distinguish the birdseed from the snare.

A house of love with no limits,
a presence more beautiful than venus or the moon,
a beauty whose image fills the mirror of the heart.

This Is Love

This is love to fly toward a secret sky,
to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment.
First, to let go of live.
In the end, to take a step without feet;
to regard this world as invisible,
and to disregard what appears to be the self.

Heart, I said, what a gift it has been
to enter this circle of lovers,
to see beyond seeing itself,
to reach and feel within the breast.

The Taste Of Morning

Time’s knife slides from the sheath,
as fish from where it swims.

Being closer and closer is the desire
of the body. Don’t wish for union!

There’s a closeness beyond that. Why
would God want a second God? Fall in

love in such a way that it frees you
from any connecting. Love is the soul’s

light, the taste of morning, no me, no
we, no claim of being. These words

are the smoke the fire gives off as it
absolves its defects, as eyes in silence,

tears, face. Love cannot be said.

Only Breath

Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu
Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion

or cultural system. I am not from the East
or the West, not out of the ocean or up

from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not
composed of elements at all. I do not exist,

am not an entity in this world or in the next,
did not descend from Adam and Eve or any

origin story. My place is placeless, a trace
of the traceless. Neither body or soul.

I belong to the beloved, have seen the two
worlds as one and that one call to and know,

There Is A Candle

first, last, outer, inner, only that
breath-breathing human being.
There is a candle in the heart of man, waiting to be kindled.
In separation from the Friend, there is a cut waiting to be
stitched.
O, you who are ignorant of endurance and the burning
fire of love—-
Love comes of its own free will, it can’t be learned
in any school.

A Moment Of Happiness

A moment of happiness,
you and I sitting on the verandah,
apparently two, but one in soul, you and I.
We feel the flowing water of life here,
you and I, with the garden’s beauty
and the birds singing.
The stars will be watching us,
and we will show them
what it is to be a thin crescent moon.
You and I unselfed, will be together,
indifferent to idle speculation, you and I.
The parrots of heaven will be cracking sugar
as we laugh together, you and I.
In one form upon this earth,
and in another form in a timeless sweet land

In The End

In the end, the mountains of imagination were nothing
but a house.
And this grand life of mine was nothing but an excuse.
You’ve been hearing my story so patiently for a lifetime
Now hear this: it was nothing but a fairy tale.

Two Kinds Of Intelligence

There are two kinds of intelligence: one acquired,
as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts
from books and from what the teacher says,
collecting information from the traditional sciences
as well as from the new sciences.

With such intelligence you rise in the world.
You get ranked ahead or behind others
in regard to your competence in retaining
information. You stroll with this intelligence
in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always more
marks on your preserving tablets.

There is another kind of tablet, one
already completed and preserved inside you.
A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness
in the center of the chest. This other intelligence
does not turn yellow or stagnate. It’s fluid,
and it doesn’t move from outside to inside
through conduits of plumbing-learning.

This second knowing is a fountainhead
from within you, moving out

Love Is Reckless;

Love is reckless; not reason.
Reason seeks a profit.
Love comes on strong,
consuming herself, unabashed.

Yet, in the midst of suffering,
Love proceeds like a millstone,
hard surfaced and straightforward.

Having died of self-interest,
she risks everything and asks for nothing.
Love gambles away every gift God bestows.

Without cause God gave us Being;
without cause, give it back again.

The Intellectual Is Always Showing Off

The intellectual is always showing off,
the lover is always getting lost.
The intellectual runs away.
afraid of drowning;
the whole business of love
is to drown in the sea.
Intellectuals plan their repose;
lovers are ashamed to rest.
The lover is always alone.
even surrounded by people;
like water and oil, he remains apart.
The man who goes to the trouble
of advising a lover
get nothing. He’s mocked by passion.
Love is like musk. It attracts attention.
Love is a tree, and the lovers are its shade.

A Moment Of Happiness,

A moment of happiness,
you and I sitting on the verandah,
apparently two, but one in soul, you and I.
We feel the flowing water of life here,
you and I, with the garden’s beauty
and the birds singing.
The stars will be watching us,
and we will show them
what it is to be a thin crescent moon.
You and I unselfed, will be together,
indifferent to idle speculation, you and I.
The parrots of heaven will be cracking sugar
as we laugh together, you and I.
In one form upon this earth,
and in another form in a timeless sweet land.

I Closed My Eyes

I closed my eyes to creation when I beheld his beauty, I became
intoxicated with his beauty and bestowed my soul.
For the sake of Solomon’s seal I became wax in all my body,
and in order to become illumined I rubbed my wax.
I saw his opinion and cast away my own twisted opinion; I
became his reed pipe and likewise lamented on his lip.
He was in my hand, and blindly I groped for him with my
hand; I was in his hand, and yet I inquired of those who were
misinformed.
I must have been either a simpleton or drunk or mad that
fearfully I was stealing from my own gold.
Like a thief I crept through a crack in the wall into my own
vine, like a thief I gathered jasmine from my own garden.
Enough, do not twist my secret upon your fingertips, for I have
twisted off out of your twisted fist.
Shams-e Tabriz, from whom comes the light of moon and
stars–though I am grieving with sorrow for him, I am like the
crescent of the festival.

The Turn

You have said what you are.
I am who I am.
You are here in my head,
my head here in my hands

Keep walking, though there’s no place go.
Don’t try to see through the distance.
That’s not for you and I.
Move within, but don’t move in fear.

A secret turning in us makes the universe turn.
Head unaware of feet,
and feet of head.
Neither cares. They keep turning.

This moment this love comes to rest in me,
many beings in one being.
In one wheat grain a thousand sheaf stacks.
In the needle’s eye a turning night of stars.

Inside water, a waterwheel turns.
A star circles with the moon.
We live in the night ocean
wondering, What are these lights?
What are these lights?

Something opens our wings.
Something makes boredom and hurt disappear.
Someone fills the cup in front of us.
We taste only sacredness…

I have lived on the lip of insanity,
wanting to know reasons,
knocking on a door.
It opens. I’ve been knocking from the inside!

Dance, when you’re broken open.
Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off.
Dance in the middle of the fighting.
Dance in your blood. Dance, when you’re perfectly free.

I am so small I can barely be seen.
How can this great love be inside me?
Look at your eyes. They are small, they are small
but they see the greatest things.

You have said what you are;
I am who I am.
You are here in my head,
My head here in my hands…

This is all about Rumi Poems.

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