Not Intrigued With Evening
What the material world values does
not shine the same in the truth of the soul.
You have been interested
in your shadow. Look instead directly at the sun.
What can we know by just
watching the time-and-space shapes of each other?
Someone half awake in the night sees imaginary dangers;
the morning star rises; the horizon grows
defined; people become friends in a moving caravan.
Night birds may think
daybreak a kind of darkness, because
that's all they know.
It's a fortunate
bird who's not intrigued with evening,
who flies in the sun we call Shams.
Excerpt from the translations of Rumi by Coleman Barks
