show your face...

O Sun, fill our house once more with light!

Make happy all your friends and blind your foes!

Rise from behind the hill, transform the stones
To rubies and the sour grapes to wine!

O Sun, make our vineyard fresh again,
And fill the steppes with houris and green cloaks!

Physician of the lovers, heaven's lamp!
Rescue the lovers! Help the suffering!

Show but your face - the world is filled with light!

But if you cover it, it's the darkest night!


--Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi
Ghazal (Ode) 1960
Translation by Annemarie Schimmel
"Look! This is Love - Poems of Rumi"
Shambhala, 1991