Poetry, the Most Compact Language

       Many have pointed out our need to be better listeners and more reluctant speakers than we are most of the time, and I have heard and read some eloquent language encouraging me to engage more fully and sensitively in what the world, others' thoughts, and my own inner voices have to say, to really listen.

       But today I heard Coleman Barks, the devoted advocate and translator of Rumi, give a line of the great Sufi poet that sums up all the other admonitions, gives their essence, and obviates the need for anything more:

                 "I should sell my tongue and buy a thousand ears."