The Ocean Duck

[strph.livejournal.com]

You're a wild Ocean-Duck
that has been raised with chickens!
Your true mother lived on the Ocean,
but your nurse was a domestic land-bird.
Your deepest soul-instincts are toward the Ocean.
Whatever land-moves you have
you learned from your nurse, the hen.
It's time now to join the ducks!
Your nurse will warn you about saltwater,
but don't listen! The Ocean's your home,
not that stinking henhouse.
You are a King, a son of Adam, who can tread water,
as well as the ground. Angels don't walk the earth,
and animals don't swim in the spiritual Ocean.
You're a man or a woman.
You do both. You stumble along, and you soar
in great circles through the sky.
We are waterbirds, my son.
The Ocean knows our language and hears us,
and replies. The sea is our Solomon.
Walk into that, and let the David-Water
make us lovely chain-mail with its ripples.
The Ocean is always around us, but sometimes
through vanity and forgetfulness we get seasick.
As thunder sometimes gives a thirsty man
a headache, when he forgets it's bringing rain.
He keeps hoping for something from the dry creek-bed.
Don't look to secondary causes!

--Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks

Comments

[katminnaar.livejournal.com]

Well, that one's interesting! :)

[strph.livejournal.com]

Heh, I know. I like this retelling of the ugly duckling story quite a lot. It's inspiring, exuberant.

My favorite lines:
"Your nurse will warn you about saltwater,
but don't listen! The Ocean's your home,
not that stinking henhouse."

[katminnaar.livejournal.com]

Yes, the whole thing's quite inspiring. :)