'You are the drop, and the ocean.You are kindness, you are anger,You are sweetness, you are poison.Do not make me more disheartened.You are the chamber of the Sun,You are the abode of Venus,You are the garden of all hope.Oh Beloved, let me enter.'The love poems by the great thirteenth-century Persian poet, Jelaluddin Rumi, founder of the Whirling Dervishes of Sufism, are both mystical and a mystery. Are they addressed to his mentor, the wandering Shams of Tabriz (who converted him to a life of joy when he was thirty-eight), or to God, or to a lover? Reflecting the complexities and paradoxes of love and devotion - separation, cruelty, and break-up - they are poems of great power and emotional intensity, of exuberant passion and overflowing imagination.Though seemingly addressed to a lover, in their imagery they encompass the universe and are metaphors of love in its physical form, reinforced by amazing rhythms, which echo the dance of the whirling dervishes.Lassaad Metoui, the renowned Arabic calligrapher, has beautifully captured the atmosphere and movement of the poems in this collection.
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