There's hidden sweetness in the stomach's emptiness...by Rumi

There's hidden sweetness in the stomach's emptiness.
We are lutes, no more, no less. 

If the soundbox is stuffed full of anything, no music.
If the brain and belly are burning clean with fasting, 
every moment a new song comes out of the fire.

The fog clears, and new energy makes you
run up the steps in front of you.
Be emptier and cry like reed instruments cry.
Emptier, write secrets with the reed pen.

When you're full of food and drink, Satan sits
where your spirit should, an ugly metal statue
in place of the Kaaba. When you fast,
good habits gather like friends who want to help.

Fasting is Solomon's ring. Don't give it
to some illusion and lose your power,
but even if you have, if you've lost all will and control,
they come back when you fast, like soldiers appearing
out of the ground, pennants flying above them.

A table descends to your tents,
Jesus' table.
Expect to see it, when you fast, this table
spread with other food, better than the broth of cabbages.

~ Rumi
From The Illuminated Rumi,
Translated by Coleman Barks

This World Which Is Made of Our Love for Emptiness...by Rumi

This World Which Is Made of Our Love for Emptiness 
Praise to the emptiness that blanks out existence. Existence: 
This place made from our love for that emptiness! 

Yet somehow comes emptiness, 
this existence goes. 
Praise to that happening, over and over!

For years I pulled my own existence out of emptiness.
Then one swoop, one swing of the arm,
that work is over.

Free of who I was, free of presence,
free of dangerous fear, hope,
free of mountainous wanting.

The here-and-now mountain
is a tiny piece of a piece of straw
blown off into emptiness.

These words I'm saying so much begin to lose meaning:
Existence, emptiness, mountain, straw:

Words and what they try to say swept
out the window, down the slant of the roof.

~ Rumi
Ode 950
Version by Coleman Barks
"Open Secret"
Threshold Books, 1984
Art by Sergey Noskov