The birds question the hoopoe and he advises them
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Attar
The Valley of Poverty and Nothingness
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Next comes that valley words cannot express,
The Vale of Poverty and Nothingness:
Here you are lame and deaf, the mind has gone;
You enter an obscure oblivion.
When sunlight penetrates the atmosphere
A hundred thousand shadows disappear,
And when the sea arises what can save
The patterns on the surface of each wave?
The two worlds are those patterns, and in vain
Men tell themselves what passes will remain
Whoever sinks within this sea is blest
And in self-loss obtains eternal rest;
The heart that would be lost in this wide sea lines
Disperses in profound tranquillity,
And if it should emerge again it knows
The secret ways in which the world arose.
The pilgrim who has grown wise in the Quest,
The sufi who has weathered every test,
Are lost when they approach this painful place,
And other men leave not a single trace;
Because all disappear, you might believe
That all are equal (just as you perceive
That twigs and incense offered to a flame
Both turn to powdered ash and look the same).
But though they seem to share a common state,
Their inward essences are separate,
And evil souls sunk in this mighty sea
Retain unchanged their base identity;
But if a pure soul sinks the waves surround
His fading form, in beauty he is drowned –
He is not, yet he is; what could this mean?
He will receive, for forty thousand years,
iThe men who are deserving in this place;
Then from that summit of celestial grace lines
They will return and know themselves once more
Bereft of light, the poorest of the poor.
I will be shown myself –
I weep to think
That from such heights to such depths
I must sink;
I have no need of my identity –
I long for death; what use is ‘T’ to me?
I live with evil while my Self is here;
With God both Self and evil disappear.
When I escape the Self I will arise And be as God;
the yearning pilgrim flies
From this dark province of mortality
To Nothingness and to Eternity.
And though, my heart, you bid the world farewell
To cross the bridge that arches over hell,
Do not despair – think of the oil-lamp’s glow
That sends up smoke as black as any crow;
Its oil is changed and what was there before
The shining flame flared up exists no more.
So you, my quaking heart, when you endure
These threatening flames, will rise up rare and pure.”
First put aside the Self, and then prepare
To mount Boraq* and journey through the air;
Drink down the cup of Nothingness;
put on The cloak that signifies oblivion –
Your stirrup is the void; absence must be
The horse that bears you into vacancy.
Destroy the body and adorn your sight
With kohl of insubstantial, darkest night.
First lose yourself, then lose this loss and then
Withdraw from all that you have lost again –
Go peacefully, and stage by stage progress
Until you gain the realms of Nothingness;
But if you cling to any worldly trace,
No news will reach you from that promised place.
The hoopoe answers the parrot
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The hoopoe said: ‘You are a cringing slave–
This is not noble, generous or brave,
To think your being has no other end
Than finding water and a loyal friend.
Think well – what is it that you hope to gain?
Your coat is beautiful, but where’s your brain?
Act as a lover and renounce your soul;
With love’s defiance seek the lover’s goal.
The parrot’s excuse
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The pretty parrot was the next to speak,
Clothed all in green, with sugar in her beak,
And round her neck a circle of pure gold.
Even the falcon cannot boast so bold
A loveliness – earth’s variegated green
Is but the image of her feathers’ sheen
And when she talks the fascinating sound
Seems sweet as costly sugar finely ground;
She trilled: ‘I have been caged by heartless men,
But my desire is to be free again;
If I could reassert my liberty
I’d find the stream of immortality
Guarded by Khezr – his cloak is green like mine,
And this shared colour is an open sign
I am his equal or equivalent.
Only the stream Khezr watches could content
My thirsting soul – I have no wish to seek
This Simorgh’s throne of which you love to speak.’
The story of a dervish and a princess
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There was a king whose comely daughter’s grace
Was such that any man who glimpsed her face
Declared himself in love. Like starless dusk
Her dark hair hung, soft-scented like fine musk;
The charm of her slow, humid eyes awoke
The depths of sleeping love, and when she spoke,
No sugar was as sweet as her lips’ sweet;
No rubies with their colour could compete.
A dervish saw her, by the will of Fate.
From his arrested hand the crust he ate
Dropped unregarded, and the princess smiled.
This glance lived in his heart – the man grew wild
With ardent love, with restless misery;
For seven years he wept continually
And was content to live alone and wait,
Abject, among stray dogs, outside her gate.
At last, affronted by this fool and tired
Of his despair, her serving-men conspired
To murder him. The princess heard their plan,
Which she divulged to him. “O wretched man,”
She said, “how could you hope for love between
A dervish and the daughter of a queen?
You cannot live outside my palace door;
Be off with you and haunt these streets no more.
If you are here tomorrow you will die!”
The dervish answered her:
“That day when I First saw your beauty I despaired of life;
Why should I fear the hired assassin’s knife?
A hundred thousand men adore your face;
No power on earth could make me leave this place.
But since your servants want to murder me,
Explain the meaning of this mystery:
Why did you smile at me that day?”
“Poor fool,
I smiled from pity, almost ridicule –
‘Your ignorance provoked that smile.” She spoke,
And vanished like a wisp of strengthless smoke.’
The hoopoe answers the nightingale
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The hoopoe answered him:
‘Dear nightingale,
This superficial love which makes you quail
Is only for the outward show of things.
Renounce delusion and prepare your wings
For our great quest; sharp thorns defend the rose
And beauty such as hers too quickly goes.
True love will see such empty transience
For what it is – a fleeting turbulence
That fills your sleepless nights with grief and blame –
Forget the rose’s blush and blush for shame!
Each spring she laughs,
not for you, as you say,
But at you – and has faded in a day.
The nightingale’s excuse
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The nightingale made his excuses first.
His pleading notes described the lover’s thirst,
And through the crowd hushed silence spread as he
Descanted on love’s scope and mystery.
‘The secrets of all love are known to me,’ He crooned.
‘Throughout the darkest night my song
Resounds, and to my retinue belong
The sweet notes of the melancholy lute,
The plaintive wailing of the love-sick flute;
When love speaks in the soul my voice replies
In accents plangent as the ocean’s sighs.
The man who hears this song spurns reason’s rule;
Grey wisdom is content to be love’s fool.
My love is for the rose; I bow to her;
From her dear presence I could never stir.
If she should disappear the nightingale
Would lose his reason and his song would fail,
And though my grief is one that no bird knows,
One being understands my heart – the rose.
I am so drowned in love that I can find
No thought of my existence in my mind.
Her worship is sufficient life for me;
The quest for her is my reality
(And nightingales are not robust or strong;
The path to find the Simorgh is too long).
My love is here; the journey you propose
Cannot beguile me from my life – the rose.
It is for me she flowers; what greater bliss
Could life provide me – anywhere – than this?
The moths and the flame
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Moths gathered in a fluttering throng one night
To learn the truth about the candle’s light,
And they decided one of them should go
To gather news of the elusive glow.
One flew till in the distance he discerned
A palace window where a candle burned –
And went no nearer; back again he flew
To tell the others what he thought he knew.
The mentor of the moths dismissed his claim,
Remarking: “He knows nothing of the flame.”
A moth more eager than the one before
Set out and passed beyond the palace door.
He hovered in the aura of the fire,
A trembling blur of timorous desire,
Then headed back to say how far he’d been,
And how much he had undergone and seen.
The mentor said: “You do not bear the signs
Of one who’s fathomed how the candle shines.
” Another moth flew out – his dizzy flight
Turned to an ardent wooing of the light;
He dipped and soared, and in his frenzied trance
Both Self and fire were mingled by his dance –
The flame engulfed his wing-tips, body, head;
His being glowed a fierce translucent red;
And when the mentor saw that sudden blaze,
The moth’s form lost within the glowing rays,
He said: “He knows, he knows the truth we seek,
That hidden truth of which we cannot speak.”
To go beyond all knowledge is to find
That comprehension which eludes the mind,
And you can never gain the longed-for goal
Until you first outsoar both flesh and soul;
But should one part remain, a single hair
Will drag you back and plunge you in despair –
No creature’s Self can be admitted here,
Where all identity must disappear.
The world compared to a wax toy
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Once someone asked a dervish to portray
The nature of this world in which we stray.
He said: “This various world is like a toy –
A coloured palm-tree given to a boy,
But made of wax – now knead it in your fist,
And there’s the wax of which its shapes consist;
The lovely forms and colours are undone,
And what seemed many things is only one.
All things are one – there isn’t any two;
It isn’t me who speaks;
it isn’t you.”
The Valley of Unity
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