Love's Snares

Love took away sleep from me and love takes away sleep,
for love purchases not the soul and mind for so much as half a barleycorn.
Love is a black lion, thirsty and blood-drinking,
it pastures only on the blood of lovers.
It clings to you in affection, and drags you to the snare;
when you have fallen in, then it looks on from afar.
Love is a tyrannous prince, an unscrupulous police officer,
it tortures and strangles the innocent.
Whoso falls into Love’s hands weeps like a cloud;
whoso dwells afar from Love freezes like snow.
Every instant Love shatters a thousand bowls into fragments,
every moment stitches and rends a thousand garments.
Love causes a thousand eyes to weep, and goes on laughing;
Love slays miserably a thousand souls, and counts them as one.
Though the simurgh flies happily in Mount Qaf,
when it sees Love’s snare it falls, and flies no more.
No man escapes from Love’s cords by deceit or madness,
no reasoning man escapes from its snare by intelligence.
My words are disordered because of Love,
else I would have shown you the ways Love travels;
I would have shown you how Love seizes the lion,
I would have shown you how Love hunts the prey.

Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi (Mystical poems of Rumi- A.J. Arberry)