Coleman Barks

North Carolina · connected1937–2026

American poet

Studied at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

linguist, poet, translator, writer

Quotations with a citation

Do not grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.

All day I think about it, then at night I say it. Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing? I have no idea. My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that, and I intend to end up there.

Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul? I cannot stop asking. If I could taste one sip of an answer, I could break out of this prison for drunks. I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way. Whoever brought me here, will have to take me home.

This poetry. I never know what I'm going to say. I don't plan it. When I'm outside the saying of it, I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.

There is a community of the spirit Join it, and feel the delight of walking in the noisy street, and being the noise.

Quit acting like a wolf, and feel the shepherd's love filling you.

Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. Live in silence. Flow down and down in always widening rings of being.

What is the body? That shadow of a shadow of your love, that somehow contains the entire universe.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about language, ideas, even the phrase each other doesn't make any sense.

Spring is Christ, Raising martyred plants from their shrouds. Their mouths open in gratitude, wanting to be kissed. The glow of the rose and the tulip means a lamp is inside. A leaf trembles. I tremble in the wind-beauty like silk from Turkestan. The censer fans into flame. This wind is the Holy Spirit. The trees are Mary.

We talk about this and that. There’s no rest except on these branching moments.

There is no reality but God, says the completely surrendered sheik, who is an ocean for all beings.

Disputational knowing wants customers. It has no soul.

Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absent-minded. Someone sober will worry about events going badly. Let the lover be.

I can't stop pointing to the beauty.Every moment and place says, "Put this design in your carpet!"

From Hallaj, I learned to hunt lions, but I became something hungrier than a lion.

This dance is the joy of existence. I am filled with you. Skin, blood, bone, brain, and soul. There's no room for lack of trust, or trust. Nothing in this existence but that existence.

The place that Solomon made to worship in, called the Far Mosque, is not built of earth and water and stone, but of intention and wisdom and mystical conversation and compassionate action.

This heart sanctuary does exist, but it can't be described. Why try! Solomon goes there every morning and gives guidance with words, with musical harmonies, and in actions, which are the deepest teaching. A prince is just a conceit until he does something with generosity.

Gamble everything for love, if you are a true human being.

Do not believe in an absurdity no matter who says it.

Silence is an ocean. Speech is a river.When the ocean is searching for you, don't walk into the language-river. Listen to the ocean, and bring your talky business to an endTraditional words are just babbling in that presence, and babbling is a substitute for sight.

Every object and being in the universe is a jar overflowing with wisdom and beauty, a drop of the Tigris that cannot be contained by any skin. Every jarful spills and makes the earth more shining, as though covered in satin.

You knock at the door of Reality. You shake your thought wings, loosen your shoulders, and open.

Christ is the population of the world, and every object as well. There is no room for hypocrisy. Why use bitter soup for healing when sweet water is everywhere?

Lovers think they are looking for each other, but there is only one search: wandering This world is wandering that, both inside one transparent sky. In here there is no dogma and no heresy.

The miracle of Jesus is himself, not what he said or did about the future. Forget the future. I'd worship someone who could do that.

The cure for pain is in the pain. Good and bad are mixed. If you don't have both, you don't belong with us.

It may be that the satisfaction I need depends on my going away, so that when I've gone and come back, I'll find it at home.

Learn from Ali how to fight without your ego participating. God's lion did nothing that didn't originate from his deep center.

I am God's Lion, not the lion of passion.... I have no longing except for the One. When a wind of personal reaction comes, I do not go along with it. There are many winds full of anger, and lust and greed. They move the rubbish around, but the solid mountain of our true nature stays where it's always been.

This that we are now created the body, cell by cell, like bees building a honeycomb.The human body and the universe grew from this, not this from the universe and the human body.

In the libraries

Open Library A year with Rumi · 2006 View library record ↗ Open Library Dīvān-i Shams-i Tabrīzī · 1952 View library record ↗ Open Library I Want Burning · 2000 View library record ↗ Open Library Rumi · 1991 View library record ↗ Open Library The Soul of Rumi · 2002 View library record ↗ Open Library The drowned book · 2003 View library record ↗

Read Coleman Barks

Dīvān-i Shams-i Tabrīzī 1952 Find a copy Rumi 1991 Find a copy A year with Rumi 2006 Find a copy The drowned book 2003 Find a copy The Soul of Rumi 2002 Find a copy I Want Burning 2000 Find a copy

Recorded without a firm citation

Kept here, labelled, rather than mixed in above.

Every tree and plant in the meadow seemed to be dancing, those which average eyes would see as fixed and still.

God's joy moved from unmarked box to unmarked box, from cell to cell.

Observe the wonders as they occur around you. Don't claim them. Feel the artistry moving through, and be silent.

Come to the orchard in Spring. There is light and wine, and sweethearts in the pomegranate flowers.If you do not come, these do not matter. If you do come, these do not matter.

He says, "There’s nothing left of me. I’m like a ruby held up to the sunrise. Is it still a stone, or a world made of redness? It has no resistance to sunlight."This is how Hallaj said, I am God, and told the truth!The ruby and the sunrise are one. Be courageous and discipline yourself.Completely become hearing and ear, and wear this sun-ruby as an earring.