My Friends!

Lesson 291: My Friends!

My friends! My friends! However hard you look
You'll not find a trace of human nature in me!
Even the maddest madman could never imagine
What I have imagined in my heart!
I am so extreme, even madmen flee me now!
For I have mingled with death, soured and soared in Non-Being.

- Jalal-ud-Din Rumi

(Translated by Andrew Harvey from A Year of Rumi)