The Cat and The Meat

There was once a sneering wife

who ate all her husband brought home

and lied about it.

One day it was some lamb for a guest

who was to come. He had worked two hundred days

in order to buy that meat.

When he was away, his wife cooked a kabob

and at it all, with wine.

The husband returns with his guest.

The cat has eaten the meat, she says.

Buy more, if you have any money left.

He asks a servant to bring the scales

and the cat. The cat weighs three pounds.

The meat was three pounds, one ounce.

If this is the cat, where is the meat?

If this is the meat, where is the cat?

Start looking for one or the other.

If you have a body, where is the spirit?

If you are spirit, what is the body?

This is not our problem to worry about.

Both are both. Corn is corn grain

and cornstalk. The divine butcher

cuts us a piece from the thigh

and a piece from the neck.

Invisible, visible, the world

does not work without both.

If you throw dust at someone's head,

nothing will happen.

If you throw water, nothing.

But combine them into a lump.

That marriage of water and earth

cracks open the head,

and afterward, there are other marriages.

 

 

I found this to be a tough one on the cushion. I think I was too compelled by the story to let go and see what was going on. That mean wife! 200 days of work for some lamb! But then I just settled down a bit and considered whether it was that or the fact that my mind struggles with duality all the time. Dust - nothing. Water, nothing. So...I should marry my body and spirit if I want to crack someone's head open? And afterward, those other marriages? What is that about? I'll keep on keeping on.

 

small note: I won't post the poems twice - it is too tedious. I have chosen the poem for today and will post on it tomorrow. I'll just tell you the title if you want to keep up! It is a series of poems in The Turn: Dance in Your Blood.  - starting on page 278, in The Essential Rumi by Barks.