Flood Residue

'The taste of today is not that of yesterday.
A pot boils over.

A watchman calls down the ladder,
Did you hear the commotion last night
from the seventh level?

Saturn turns to Venus and tells her
to play the strings more gently.
Taurus milk turns red. Leo slinks from the sky.

Strange signs, because of a word
that comes from the soul
to help us escape speaking and concepts.

I answer the nightwatchman,
You will have to assign meanings
for these ominous events.

I have been set free from the hunt,
the catching and being caught,
to rest in these dregs
of flood residue, pure and empty.'

The Essential Rumi- Coleman Barks, p296.