“Start Your Lives Over” (Rumi)

Last night the elephant wandered India again

and tore the darkness to shreds. Let our daylight lives be like last night.

Let mystics constantly remember, and the parts and the whole be happily equal.

In our hands, wine. In our heads, wind.

Night contains the day. The ocean breaks into waves.

The sky wears the gift we gave. Whatever customs humanity had

become ways of compassion.

Nothing with shape and dimensions

can keep still when passion moves.

Start your lives over. Everyone is totally forgiven, no matter what.

This is the surge that cannot be resisted, a grace that is this time named Saladin, an annihilating friendship, like the one with Joseph, which the king of Egypt paid for with Egypt.