Ghazal 2831 (Divan i Rumi)

By Jalaluddin Rumi

At the time of evening prayer

Everyone spreads cloth and candles

But I dream of my beloved

See, lamenting, grieved, his phantom.

My ablution is with weeping,

Thus my prayer will be fiery,

And I burn the mosque’s doorway

When my call to prayer strikes it.

Is the prayer of the drunken,

Tell me, is this prayer valid?

For he does not know the timing

And is not aware of places.

Did I pray for two full cycles?

Or is this perhaps the eighth one?

And which Sura did I utter?

For I have no tongue to speak it.

At God’s door-how could I know now,

For I have no hand or heart now?

You have carried heart and hand, God!

Grant me safety, God, forgive me…  

Jalaluddin Rumi, in Annemarie Schimmel, Rumi’s World: The Life and Works of the Greatest Sufi Poet (Shambhala Publications, 1992)