THE CAT AND THE MEAT

There once was a sneering wife
who ate all her husband brought home
and lied about it.

One day it was some lamb for a guest
who was to come. He had worked two hundred days
in order to buy that meat.

When he was away, his wife cooked a kabob
and ate it all, with wine.

The husband returns with the guest.
"The cat has eaten the meat," she says.
"Buy more, if you have any money left!"

He asks a servant to bring the scale,
and the cat. The cat weighs three pounds.
"The meat was three pounds, one ounce.
if this is the cat, where is the meat?
If this is the meat, where is the cat?
Start looking for one or the other!"

If you have a body, where is the spirit?
If you're spirit, what is the body?

This is not our problem to worry about.
Both are both. Corn is corn grain and cornstalk.
The divine butcher cuts us a piece from the thigh,
and a piece from the neck.

Invisible, visible, the world
does not work without both.

If you throw dust at some one's head,
nothing will happen.
If you throw water, nothing.
But combine them into a lump.
                                             The marriage
of water and dirt cracks open the head,
and afterward there are other marriages.

                                                               RUMI