Money and realestate occupy the body,
but all the heart wants is expanding friendship.

A rose garden without a friend is indeed a prison;
a prison with a friend becomes a rose garden.

If the pleasure of friendship did not exist,
neither men nor women would be here.
A thorn from a friends’s garden is worth more
than a thousand cypresses and lilies.

Love sewed us securely together.
We owe nothing to the needle and thread.

If the house of the world is dark,
Love will find a way to create windows.

If the world is full of arrows and swords,
the Armorer of Love has made us coats of nail.

Love itself describes it’s own perfection.
Be speechless and listen.

Divani Shamsi Tabrizi 1926

From: Rumi ” Love’s Ripening”
Translated by K. Helminski & A Rezwami