Which Rumi poem is excerpted on 'Kaleidoscope' from A Head Full of Dreams?

“Which Rumi poem is excerpted on ‘Kaleidoscope’ from A Head Full of Dreams?” The answer is “The Guesthouse.”

Coldplay’s “Kaleidoscope,” on the 2015 album A Head Full of Dreams, incorporates a spoken excerpt from “The Guesthouse,” a poem attributed to the Persian poet and mystic Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi. The recording is credited to Coleman Barks, whose English adaptations helped make Rumi widely known to modern English-speaking audiences.

The poem imagines the human mind or self as a guesthouse where joy, sadness, anger and other emotions arrive as temporary visitors. That idea fits the album’s recurring themes of emotional openness, acceptance and transformation.

Listeners sometimes confuse “The Guesthouse” with other popular Rumi poems such as “Only Breath” or “The Reed Flute.” Those are separate works; the credited excerpt connected with “Kaleidoscope” is “The Guesthouse.” The song also contains material associated with “Amazing Grace,” creating another possible source of confusion.