I want to hold you close like a lute - Rumi -

Portrait - By Khalil Gibran -

We are pain and what cures pain, both.

We are the sweet cold water and the jar that pours.

I want to hold you close like a lute,

so that we can cry out with loving.

Would you rather throw stones at a mirror?

I am your mirror and here are the stones.

In the lover’s heart is a lute

Which plays the melody of longing

You say he looks crazy

But that’s only because your ears are not attuned

to the music he’s dancing to

You are sitting here with us,

but you are also out walking in a field at dawn.

You are yourself the animal we hunt

when you come with us on the hunt.

You are in your body

like a plant is solid in the ground,

yet you are wind.

You are the diver’s clothes

lying empty on the beach.

You are the fish.

In the ocean are many bright strands

and many dark strands like veins that are seen

when a wing is lifted up.

Your hidden self is blood in those,

those veins that are lute strings

that make ocean music,

not the sad edge of surf,

but the sound of no shore.

Portrait - Khalil Gibran

Venus touches the strings of her lute

to lure out essence of this poem

My heart is like a lute each chord crying with longing and pain.

My Beloved is watching me wrapped in silence.