“What if a man cannot be made to say anything? How do you learn his hidden nature?”
“I sit in front of him in silence, and set up a ladder made of patience, and if in his presence a language from beyond joy and beyond grief begins to pour from my chest, I know that his soul is as deep and bright as the star Canopus rising over Yemen. And so when I start speaking a powerful right arm of words sweeping down, I know him from what I say, and how I say it, because there’s a window open between us, mixing the night air of our beings.”
The youngest was the laziest. He won.”
Excerpt from The Night Air, by Jalaluddin Rumi, translation from Persian by Colleman Barks
Theo and Mira 