Discourses of Rumi

FIHI MA FIHI V 243How can I keep away, when you are my need?God gives elders a youthful passion that young people have noknowledge of.Great is old age,When the grey hairs appear,And playfulness runs amok.Such an elder sees the world with a freshness,as if it were new. They laugh and play.They ask, “When someone passes eighty, willthey play?”“Will they play before eighty?” I say.So the glory of old age is greater than God’sdisplay. In spring, God shows Its grace, frail andsmiling. In autumn, old age prevails. The worldlygarden is ruined. The apparent bounty is gone.God is beyond everythingThat the forces of destruction can sling.