A Sun Rose
By Iljas Baker
So many stories
of that meeting
between Rumi and Shams
outside the sugar merchants’ hostel
or in the courtyard of a madarasa
somewhere
Rumi fainted or Shams fainted or
neither fainted
and Rumi’s books
were consumed by fire
by water
or there were no books
But always the same question
posed by Shams:
Who was greater
Bayazid or Muhammad?
Bayazid spoke of being full of God
Muhammad admitted to being far from full
The answer is obvious then
but impossible!
a saint cannot be greater
than the Prophet!
Impossible!
Hence the fainting
Two images formed in Rumi’s soul:
a cup in the rain quickly fills
but the ocean keeps receiving
that watery grace
Shams and Rumi then became inseparable until
a sun rose within Rumi’s soul
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Iljas Baker was born in Scotland and now lives in Thailand. After a twenty year hiatus he started writing poetry again after retiring from his position as a visiting lecturer at a Thai university. His poems have appeared in three anthologies, namely The God's Eye, We Humans, and A Kaleidoscope of Stories: Muslim Voices in Contemporary Poetry and in numerous poetry journals including The Bosphorus Review of Books, Mediterranean Poetry, Ribbons: The Journal of the Tanka Society of America, Snapdragon: A Journal of Art and Healing, and Soul-Lit: a journal of spiritual poetry.