Confused and Distraught
Confused and Distraught - context Summary
Love for Sham-e Tabrizi
This poem presents Rumi’s mystical intoxication and devotional longing for his spiritual guide, Sham-e Tabrizi. The speaker describes identity dissolving into an overpowering love that breaks ordinary bonds and distinctions—reason and madness, cup and wine, self and other. Images of rapture, repentance, and spiritual turmoil show devotion as both disruptive and sanctifying. The poem locates personal bewilderment within Sufi practice of ecstatic wakefulness and love for the mentor.
Read Complete AnalysesAgain I am raging, I am in such a state by your soul that every bond you bind, I break, by your soul. I am like heaven, like the moon, like a candle by your glow; I am all reason, all love, all soul, by your soul. My joy is of your doing, my hangover of your thorn; whatever side you turn your face, I turn mine, by your soul. I spoke in error; it is not surprising to speak in error in this state, for this moment I cannot tell cup from wine, by your soul. I am that madman in bonds who binds the “divs”; I, the madman, am a Solomon with the “divs”, by your soul. Whatever form other than love raises up its head from my heart, forthwith I drive it out of the court of my heart, by your soul. Come, you who have departed, for the thing that departs comes back; neither you are that, by my soul, nor I am that, by your soul. Disbeliever, do not conceal disbelief in your soul, for I will recite the secret of your destiny, by your soul. Out of love of Sham-e Tabrizi, through wakefulness or nightrising, like a spinning mote I am distraught, by your soul.
“Mystical Poems of Rumi 2” A. J. Arberry The University of Chicago Press, 1991
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