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.
I’m not saying this right
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You bind me,
and I tear away in a rage
to open out into air,
a round brightness,
a candlepoint,
all reason, all love.
This confusing joy, your doing,
this hangover, your tender thorn.
You turn to look, I turn.
I’m not saying this right.
I am a jailed crazy who ties up spirit-women.
I am Solomon.
What goes comes back. Come back.
We never left each other.
A disbeliever hides disbelief,
but I will say his secret.
More and more awake,
getting up at night,
spinning and falling with love
for Shams.
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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Next comes the Valley of pure Unity,
place of lonely, long austerity,
And all who enter on this waste have found
Their various necks by one tight collar bound –
If you see many here or but a few,
They’re one, however they appear to you.
The many here are merged in one;
one form Involves the multifarious, thick swarm
(This is the oneness of diversity,
Not oneness locked in singularity);
Unit and number here have passed away;
Forget for-ever and Creation’s day –
That day is gone; eternity is gone;
Let them depart into oblivion.
Majnoun’s love for Leili
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When Leili’s tribe refused Majnoun, he found
They would not let him near their camping-ground.
Distraught with love, he met a shepherd there
And asked him for a sheepskin he could wear,
And then, beneath the skin, began to creep
On hands and knees as if he were a sheep.
“Now lead your flock,” he cried, past Leili’s tent;
It may be I shall catch her lovely scent
And hidden by this matted fleece receive
From untold misery one hour’s reprieve.”
And so Majnoun, disguised beneath the skin,
Drew near his love unnoticed by her kin –
Joy welled in him and in its wild excess
The frenzied lover lost all consciousness;
Love’s fire had dried the fluids of his brain –
He fainted and lay stretched out on the plain;
The shepherd bore him to a shaded place
And splashed cold water on his burning face.
Later, Majnoun was talking with some friends
When one said: “What a tattered fleece defends
Your body from the cold;
but trust in me I’ll bring you all you need immediately.”
Majnoun replied: “No garment’s worthy of Dear Leili,
but I wear this skin for love –
I know how fortune favours me,
and I Burn rue to turn away the Evil Eye.”
The fleece for him was silk and rare brocade;
With what else should a lover be arrayed?
I too have known love scent the passing air –
What other finer garment could I wear?
If you would scour yourself of each defect,
Let passion wean you from the intellect –
To leave such toys and sacrifice the soul
Is still the first small step towards our goal.
Begin, if you can set aside all shame –
To risk your life is not some childish game.
Ali in battle
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Learn from Ali how to fight
without your ego participating.
God’s Lion did nothing
that didn’t originate from his deep center.
Once in battle
he got the best of a certain knight
and quickly drew his sword.
The man, helpless on the ground,
spat in Ali’s face.
Ali dropped his sword, relaxed,
and helped the man to his feet.
“Why have you spared me?
How has lightning contracted back into its cloud?
Speak, my prince,
so that my soul can begin to stir in me
like an embryo.”
Ali was quiet and then finally answered,
“I am God’s Lion, not the lion of passion.
The sun is my lord.
I have no longing except for the One.
When a wind of personal reaction comes,
I do not go along with it.
There are many winds full of anger,
and lust and greed.
They move the rubbish around,
but the solid mountain of our true nature
stays where it’s always been.
There’s nothing now except the divine qualities.
Come through the opening into me.
Your impudence was better
than any reverence,
because in this moment.
I am you and you are me.
I give you this opened heart
as God gives gifts:
the poison of your spit
has become the honey of friendship.
The reed sparrow
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