Madness Runs from Me a Poem by Rumi

Madness Runs from Me 

This time I’m totally
engulfed, in love.
This time I’m entirely
cutt-off from well being.

I’ve torn myself away from myself;
I’m living on something else.
Intellect, mind, and thinking itself,
I’ve burned to their roots.

O people! people!
I am not capable of civility.
Even a madman wouldn’t think,
the thoughts I hold in my heart.

Even a madman would weep
and flee from my madness.
I’ve submerged in death
and passed into non-being.

Today, my intellect
gave up on me all together,
a feeble attempt to intimidate me.
How simple does it think I am!

Why should I worry about its leaving?
I just frowned at it!
I’m not bewildered at all!
But I can pretend to be!

Expediently I’ve remained
in the prison of this world,
but why? for what crime
should I be in this prison?

……………..

Look at me as many times as you wish,
but you won’t get to know me;
since you have last seen me,
I’ve changed a hundred times.

Come into my eyes,
and look at me through them’
for I have chose a Home
far beyond what eyes can see.

You’re happy headed and dead drunk’
but I am a happy, headless drunk.
You’re a laughing lover,
but I’ve been laughing without a sound.

-Rumi

Related articles

• Initiatic Grace in the Masterwork of Jalal ud-din Rumi by Lynn C. Bauman (mycaravanofdreams.com)
• Rumi And The Way of the Spiritual Lover by Shaykh Kabir Helminski (mycaravanofdreams.com)
• [Rumi] Gamble Everything for Love (armanrousta.com)
• water is searching for the thirsty – Mevlana Jelalludin Rumi (iarastu.wordpress.com)

Tags: Coleman Barks, Essential Rumi, islam, Rumi Poetry, Sufis of Antiquity, Sufism