M3:3269 — بوک حیوانات را دردی دگر / باشد از تدبیر هنگام گذر

This couplet expresses the idealistic hope of a young man who has asked the prophet Moses to teach him the language of animals. He has just dismissed human speech as being consumed by worldly needs for "bread and water." Now, he projects a spiritual purity onto the animal kingdom.

He speculates that animals might have a "different kind of pain" (dardī digar). The word dard in Sufi parlance is not just suffering, but a spiritual longing or existential ache for God—a noble affliction. The man imagines that animal concerns transcend the mundane "planning" (tadbīr) that dominates human life. He hopes to overhear in their calls a purer, more spiritually instructive form of anxiety about existence itself ("as they pass through life").

This is a classic Rumi setup: a character with a seemingly pious but misguided desire. The man thinks wisdom lies in an external, esoteric source (animal speech), whereas Moses will soon warn him that true insight (ʿibrat) comes from God alone, not from any special knowledge or technique.