I see the face

I see the face
that was my home.

My loving says, I will let go
of everything for that.

My soul begins to keep rhythm
as if music is playing.

My reason says, What do you call
this cypress-energy that straightens
what was bent double?

All things change in this presence.
Armenians and Turks no longer know
which is which.

Soul keeps unfolding inward.
The body leaves the body.

A wealth you cannot imagine
flows through you.

Do not consider what strangers say.
Be secluded in your secret heart-house,
that bowl of silence.

Talking, no matter how humble-seeming,
is really a kind of bragging.

Let silence be the art you practice.

~ Rumi, from Rumi: Bridge to the Soul, by Coleman Barks

From the introduction to this book:

Rumi devotes a lot of attention to silence, especially at the end of poems, where he gives the words back into the silence they came from (khamush in Persian). It is truly one of the mysteries that flow through him. No other poet pays so much homage to silence. He was once asked, "Isn't it strange that you talk so much about silence?" He answered, "The radiant one inside me has never said a word."