Love Is Longing

Love is longing and longing, the pain of being parted;

No illness is rich enough for the distress of the heart.

A lover’s lament surpasses all other cries of pain,

Love is the royal threshold to God’s mystery.

The carnival of small affections and polite attachments

Which litter and consume our passing time

Is no match to Love which pulses behind this play.

To live Love is to be seized by joy and bewilderment;

Love is not clear-minded, busy with images and argument.

Language is too precocious, too impudent, too sane

To stop the molten lava of Love churning the blood.

Love is dangerous, offering no consolation;

Only those who are ravaged by Love know Love.

The sun alone unveils the sun to those who have

The sense to receive the senseless and not turn away.

Cavernous shadows need the light to play

But light and light alone can lead you

To the light alone.

Our daily sun is but a working star in a galaxy of stars,

But our inner sun is One,

The dancing nuance of eternal light.

You must be set alight by the inner sun,

You have to live your Love or else

You’ll only end in words.

Rumi