AYAZ AND THE KING'S PEARL

One day the king assembled his courtiers.
He handed the minister a glowing pearl.
"What would you say this is worth?"
"More gold
than a hundred donkeys could carry."
"Break it!"
"Sir, how could I waste your resources
like that?" The king presented him
with a robe of honor for his answer
and took back the pearl. He talked a while
to the assembly on various topics.
Then he put the pearl
in the Chamberlain's hand. "What would it sell for!"
"Half a kingdom, God preserve it!"
"Break it!"
"My hand could not move to do such a thing."
The king rewarded him with a robe of honor
and an increase in his salary, and so it went
with each of the fifty or sixty courtiers.

One by one, they imitated the minister
and the Chamberlain and received new wealth.

Then the pearl was given to Ayaz.

"Can you say how splendid this is?"
"It's more than I can say."
"Then break it,
this second, into tiny pieces."
Ayaz had had a dream
about this, and he'd hidden two stones in his sleeves.
He crushed the pearl to powder between them.

As Joseph at the bottom of the well listen
to the end of his story, so such listeners
understand success and UN-success as one thing.

Don't worry about forms.
If someone wants your horse,
let them have it. Horses are for
hurrying ahead of the others.


The court assembly screamed at the recklessness
to Ayaz, "How could you do that?"

"What the king says is worth more than any pearl.
I honor the king, not some colored stone."

The princes immediately fell on their knees
and put their foreheads on the ground.

Their sighs went up like a smoke cloud
asking forgiveness. The king gestured
to his executioner as though to say,
"Take out this trash."
Ayaz spang forward.
"Your mercy makes them bow like this.
Give them their lives! Let them keep hoping
for union with you. They see their forgetfulness
now, as the drunken man did when he said,
'I didn't know what I was doing,' and then
someone pointing out, 'But you invited
that forgetfulness into you. You drank it.
There was a choice!'

They know deeply now how imitation
lulled them to sleep. Don't separate yourself
from them. Look at all their heads against the floor.

Raise their faces into yours. Let them wash
in your cool washing place."
Ayaz and his speech always get to his point
and then the pen breaks. How can a saucer
contain the ocean? The drunks break their cups,
but you pour that wine!
Ayaz said, "You picked me
to crush the pearl. Don't punish the others
for my drunken obedience!
Punish them when I'm sober,
because I'll never be sober again.

Whoever bows down like they are bowing down
will not rise up in his old self again.

Like a gnat in your buttermilk,
They've become your buttermilk.

The mountains are trembling. Their map and compass
are the lines in your palm."
Husam,
I need a hundred mouths to say this,
but I only have this one!

A hundred thousand impressions from the spirit
are wanting to come through here.
I feel stunned
in this abundance, crushed and dead.

REFERENCE: THE ESSENTIAL
RUMI
BY COLEMAN BARKS