You Have No Idea...(Oh, But I Do...!)
for a gift to bring You.
Nothing seemed right.
What's the point of bringing gold to
the gold mine, or water to the ocean.
Everything I came up with was like
... taking spices to the Orient.
It's no good giving my heart and my
soul because you already have these.
So I've brought you a mirror.
Look at yourself and remember me.
This poem was written by Rumi (1207-1273), a remowned Persian poet. I have always loved his poems. I think I have about 3 or 4 books by Rumi. Some I've read and some I haven't. What I love about his poems is the ambiguity, or, the different layers of meaning. Sometimes however, it is not easy to decipher these meanings. Like onions, you have to peel these layers one by one.
Known as a Sufi poet, his poems naturally revolve around God, but as can be seen from the poem above, his poems can also be read as love poems. As in human love *chuckle*.
I can relate to the idea of giving gifts in the first stanza. One usually manifests his/her love through giving - and this usually comes in the form of a gift. The gift is like an extension of the persona's love. The gift therefore plays a symbolic role. But the persona feels like no gift, not even the most expensive one, is sufficient to describe his love. His heart and soul already belong to his lover, and no other gift could ever measure up to this. All he wants is for his lover to remember him. That when his lover looks at the mirror, or looks at herself, she does not only see herself, but also him. Wonder why one's partner is often referred to as 'the-other half'? That's why the last line really speaks to me...
Today I begin to understand what love must be, if it exists... When we are parted, we each feel the lack of the other half of ourselves. We are incomplete like a book in two volumes of which the first has been lost. That is what I imagine love to be: incompleteness in absence. ~ Edmond De Goncourt
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