A Moment of Happiness
A Moment of Happiness - form Summary
Refrain Centers Mystical Union
Rumi's poem is a ghazal from the Divan-i Shams-i Tabrizi that uses a repeating refrain, you and I
, to bind otherwise image-driven couplets into a single spiritual utterance. As in the ghazal tradition, brief self-contained scenes—on a verandah, in a garden, under the stars—are returned to by the chorus, which functions like a litany and enacts mystical union rather than logical argument. The repetition creates chant-like intimacy and dissolves individual separateness; the poem's structure thereby models the Sufi theme of union with the beloved or divine.
A moment of happiness, you and I sitting on the verandah, apparently two, but one in soul, you and I. We feel the flowing water of life here, you and I, with the garden's beauty and the birds singing. The stars will be watching us, and we will show them what it is to be a thin crescent moon. You and I unselfed, will be together, indifferent to idle speculation, you and I. The parrots of heaven will be cracking sugar as we laugh together, you and I. In one form upon this earth, and in another form in a timeless sweet land.
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