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corrocamino
12-04-2012, 08:20 AM
Although I've read a great many books, I've never been a student of "literature", or of poetry (though one of my callow versifications once was published, obscurely). This notwithstanding, I somehow have come to enjoy occasional readings in the poetry of "Rumi" (aka Mevlana Jalaluddin), a Sufi mystic of medieval Iconium (today's Konya) in the times of the Seljuk Sultanate. This I have in the form of English translations from the original Persian, re-translated anew by Coleman Barks for popular American consumption in his book "The Essential Rumi". Here's a specimen that might be of interest to our resident economists:

The Uses of Fear

A donkey turning a millstone is not trying
to press oil from sesame seed.

He's fleeing the blow just struck
and hoping to avoid the next.

For the same reason, an ox takes a load
of baggage wherever you want him to.

Shopkeepers work for themselves,
not for the flow of communal exchange.

We all look to ease our pain,
and this keeps civilization moving along.

... [et seq.]

Muslims can't be all bad! :>)

corrocamino
12-04-2012, 10:01 AM
(Maybe they can? :undecided:)