Our neighbor and dear friend Elena Vialo died peacefully this morning after a short illness. Rest in Peace.

These are some pictures from when she and her husband Gunnar came over for Christmas.

Yesterday, we were visiting with her. Near the bed was a book of poems she liked, The Essential Rumi, by the thirteenth-century Sufi mystic Jelaluddin Rumi. One of us read the last poem in the book to her.

***

Say I am You, by Jelaluddin Rumi

I am dust particles in sunlight,

I am the round sun.

To the bits of dust I say, Stay.

To the sun, Keep moving.

I am morning mist,

and the breathing of evening.

I am wind in the top of a grove,

and surf on the cliff.

Mast, rudder, helmsman, and keel,

I am also the coral reef they founder on.

I am a tree with a trained parrot in its branches.

Silence, thought, and voice.

The musical air coming through a flute,

a spark of stone, a flickering

in metal. Both candle,

and the moth crazy around it.

Rose, and the nightingale

lost in the fragrance.

I am all orders of being, the circling galaxy,

the evolutionary intelligence, the lift,

and the falling away. What is,

and what isn't. You who know

Jelaluddin, You the one

in all, say who

I am. Say I

am You.

***

We'll miss you, Elena. It was a joy and an honor to know you.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 16th, 2005 at 9:47 am and is filed under Rudy's Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.