Don’t Go Anywhere Without Me
Don’t Go Anywhere Without Me - meaning Summary
Desire for Constant Presence
This poem expresses a speaker’s intense wish for constant, intimate presence with a beloved or divine other. The speaker asks that nothing occur—sights, words, actions, daily tasks—without their shared participation, equating the beloved with vision, language, and the road itself. Ordinary activities become meaningful only through union. The tone mixes urgency and tenderness, portraying dependence not as weakness but as a deep need for companionship and orientation.
Read Complete AnalysesDon’t go anywhere without me. Let nothing happen in the sky apart from me, or on the ground, in this world or that world, without my being in its happening. Vision, see nothing I don’t see. Language, say nothing. The way the night knows itself with the moon, be that with me. Be the rose nearest to the thorn that I am. I want to feel myself in you when you taste food, in the arc of your mallet when you work, when you visit friends, when you go up on the roof by yourself at night. There’s nothing worse than to walk out along the street without you. I don’t know where I’m going. You’re the road, and the knower of roads, more than maps, more than love.
The Essential Rumi Coleman Barks
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