The Waterwheel, by Jalaluddin Rumi

The Waterwheel

Stay together, friends.
Don’t scatter and sleep.

Our friendship is made
of being awake.

The waterwheel accepts water
and turns and gives it away,
weeping.

That way it stays in the garden,
whereas another roundness rolls
through a dry riverbed looking
for what it thinks it wants.

Stay here, quivering with each moment
like a drop of mercury.


by Jalaluddin Rumi, from The Essential Rumi: New Expanded Edition,
translated from the Persian by Coleman Barks, 2004

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