Without My Own Head

If I do not express in speech your elegance, I have your love within my breast.
If I smell a rose without your love, forthwith burn me like a thorn.
If I am silent as a fish, yet I am restless as the waves and the sea.
You who have set a seal on my lips, draw my toggle towards You.
What is your design? What should I know? I only know that I am in this train.
I chew the cud of grief for you like a camel, like a raging camel I bring up foam.
Though I keep hidden and do not speak, in the presence of Love I am manifest.
I am like a seed under the soil, I am waiting upon the signal of spring,
That without my own breath I may breathe sweetly,
that without my own head I may scratch a head.

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