Moment by moment you await understanding
and spiritual perception,
peace and good to arrive from nonexistence.
Nonexistence, then, is God's factory
from which He continually produces goods.
He has caused what is nonexistent
to appear magnificently existent,
while the truly existent He has caused to appear as nonexistent.
He has hidden the Sea, yet made the foam visible;
He has concealed the Wind, but displayed the dust.
The dust whirls in the air higher than a minaret:
does it rise by itself? You see the dust borne high,
but the Wind you don't see, although you can surmise it.
You see the white-capped waves tumbling in every direction,
but without the Sea the foam has no way to move.
You see the foam by sense perception and the Sea by induction:
just as speech is manifest and thought is hidden.

-- Mathnawi V:1022; 1024; 1026-1031
            Version by Camille and Kabir Helminski
            "Rumi: Jewels of Remembrance"
            Threshold Books, 1996