Here are the miracle-signs you want,
that you cry through the night
and get up at dawn asking,

that in the absence of what you ask for,
your day gets dark, your neck thin
as a spindle, that what you give away
is all you own, that you sacrifice belongings,
sleep, health, your head,

that you often sit down in a fire like aloeswood
and often go out to meet a blade
like a battered helmet.

When acts of helplessness become habitual,
those are the signs.

Excuse my wandering.
How can one be orderly with this?

It is like counting leaves in a garden,
along with the song-notes of partridges
and crows. Sometimes organization
and computation become absurd.

~ from Coleman Barks' A Year with Rumi