Look at the chickpeas in the pot,
how they leap up when they feel
the fire,
While boiling one of them rises to
the top
And cries, “ Why are you setting this fire
Under me?
Did you buy me for this tumbling and
torture?”
The housewife keeps hitting it with
the ladle.
“No!” she says, “boil nicely now,
and don’t leap away from the one who
makes the fire.
It’s not because you are hateful to me
that I boil you,
but so that you might gain flavour,
and become nutritious and mingle with
essential spirit.
The affliction is not because you
are despised.
When you were green and fresh,
You were watered in the garden:
that watering was for the sake of
this fire.”
-Rumi
MATHNAWI III 4159-65
(Selections from the MATHANWI)
