With God. Go, offer words to that empty sky—
Who the hell are you that He should reply?
THE KNOWLEDGE
From father to son it passes, my friend, the belief –
Learn now its value or come elsewhere to grief.
FLEAS
Don’t burn the blanket infested with a single flea
Don’t turn away from the human who is as flawed as
thee.
THE DUMB CAN SPEAK
The word of the Book can be spoken by the dumb
Say in your heart, “When the help of God shall come.”
MIRRORS
The Prophet said the faithful are mirrors to each other
You in subjugation are no better than your brother
To seek solace in humankind
is the way of fools
Earthly loves,
are shattered mirrors,
Or are but mangled tools.
KINSHIP
To speak the same language is one form of kin
Yet that which unites is the language within
One Turk and the other may share the same tongue
Do they hear the same music when the heart’s song
is sung?
TONGUE
Your tongue, O rambling friend,
Can make heaven on earth its double
And yet your tongue, O Rumi,
Is the fount of all your trouble!
SOLOMON AND SHEBA
Sheba knew that King Solomon was
Fated for her virgin bed because
The marriage between wealth and wisdom would
Conspire to bequeath the world the good
Which both their realms in troubled times desired.
Besides which she was awesomely inspired
By what she heard of his inventive wit
And charm and strength. She knew she wanted it.
She sent him forty mules loaded with bricks
Of gold and a ring wound in a helix
But when this mule train reached Solomon’s realm
They saw a plain of gold spread before them.
So on and on they walked for forty days
Shielding their eyes from its reflected rays
And thinking “Where the hell have we been sent?
This gold is but this kingdom’s fundament!
We may as well have brought a pile of dust
To Solomon.” The intelligent must
Reconsider their intelligence
Which may be commoner than common sense.
But Solomon was mildly amused
His wise reply was subtly interfused
With sarcasm. “Why do you bring me gifts?
Observe instead the loving hand that shifts
The planets and the stars and moves the sun
O leave your gold, unite me with the One
Who created every moving galaxy
And gave us light so that our eyes might see.”
Then Solomon sent Sheba’s servants back
To tell their queen of gold he had no lack
In a land which was constructed of the stuff
And though rejection may seem a bit rough
A little thought would help her understand
That he was merely trying to lend a hand
To lead her from the vanity of thrones
Out of this vale of tears and sighs and groans
To where the wandering Ibrahim did find
The peace of that which resides in the mind
The light that Yusuf found when he emerged
And found the darkness of his hell was purged
By revelation. Though it may sound strange
O Queen, embrace the alchemy of change!
USE WHAT HE HAS GRANTED YOU
Use what He has granted you, my friend
While shafts exist the bow must not unbend
His word is sharp and always hits the spot
Unlike the quibbles “if,” “maybe” and “what!”
He is the sunlight slicing through the dark
He is the silence of the twilit park
The body is but that which must endure
And love is what we must be grateful for
Laughter is the caged beast in your breast
Unleash it now before you go to rest
I want to be surrounded by your love
As a hand is covered by a fitting glove
Does love infest your soul and every sense?
The colours of the world are evidence
Of divine waters, divine time and space
Reflected in the lines of Shams’s face.
DOUBT
You are the thoughts that sowed my mind with doubt
You are the secret longing to get out.
LIKE THIS
How does the longing turn itself to bliss?
Raise your eyes and smile and say: “Like this!”
The song of love, the story of a kiss
Is easy to recount; it’s just like this!
All souls return, O sceptic don’t dismiss
The fact that I can return home: like this!
Don’t ever stoop to sniff out the spirit
Whose scent is beyond sense and human wit
Just lean forward, let’s be cheek to cheek
You will have found the fragrance that you seek.
If someone asks how Issah raised the dead
There is no answer. Nothing I have read
Can tell me how it’s done, but I know this
The closest explanation, is a kiss
The pain of passion is akin to fire
Loving leaves me with traces of desire
The crack that rents and stills a broken heart
Is that which forces heaven’s doors apart.
SCIENCE
Trees are rooted in the ground,
They fear
The sound of sawing wood
—It draws near
They are the prey of every
saw-toothed will
Because they draw their life
by standing still
The Tigris and Euphrates
would be,
Without their flow, as salty
as the sea.
And both the sun and moon give
out their light
As sparks in the machine of day
and night
The air that’s trapped in caverns
becomes stale
How different from the breeze that
fills a sail!
So movement is the law –
The law that rules the skies
Issah caused the dead to
cast off their shrouds and rise
by breathing into dust a living soul
saying, ‘Rise, your faith had made thee whole!’
Signs and symbols
stories I recall,
should lead you on a journey
That is all!
LOVE IS ALL
Love is all there is and that’s not new
I’ve heard that all my life—and so have you
But love is also that which guarantees
That you pass through heaven’s doors with ease
So what then is this “love?” My heart be still!
What more is it than melting of the will
Into the will of that which can’t be known?
Or snared in mental traps? That bird has flown
Beyond the clouds of knowing. Now submit!
If there’s a truth on earth, this is it.
*
Love is that which makes the bitter sweet
Love is that which charms a leaden sheet
Into a solid plate of gold. Love can
Heal a wound and cure the ailing man
Love can be kind or harsh, it can expose
The cruel thorn pretending it’s a rose
Love, the acid that can smelt a stone
It is the spell that makes the sun postpone
>
Its tryst with dawn. It can delay the light
And grant the lovers that much more of night
Through love the healer resurrects the dead
And bids Sofia to walk with her bed
I had to bring the healer Issah in
God’s love sent him to forgive all sin
Embrace God’s love and come to Him alone
—And make the scaffold of this world
Your throne.
*
Love knows no king, no slave, no thief, no saint
Love grabs the worst and best without restraint
Love bears us up to answer heaven’s call
Would you have guessed he summons
one and all?
VOICES
All prophets are but windows to the light
You can’t say one was wrong and one was right
They are the same, their message is but one
To crave the light, is to accept the sun.
POURING RAIN
Receive his wisdom like the pouring rain
Its source is endless but like harvest grain
It has its season. Though you’ll only get
As much as you deserve of it—and yet
He has in store an infinite supply
Available to every passerby
He measures out the wisdom he will dole
In accord with the measure of your bowl.
SAMARITANS
To those who cry for help
The Samaritan will come
Drawn to the sound. God knows
There are some
Who seek to help where
It isn’t needed.
Their awareness of need
Has superseded
Restraint and caution,
Your desire to please
To diagnose and cure
Means you know the disease.
Or the law that makes
water flow from high to low,
It is absurd to ask,
“How does the water know?
In which direction
It must start?”
Let the music of the spheres
Speak to your heart!
Brush the hair
That falls over your eyes
Unchain your feet
Let them walk the skies
The ecstasy will come
As a mother to a child
If you let your cry break out
—pure, heartfelt and wild!
NASUH
A man named Nasuh, soft of feature
Was often mistaken for a female creature
Satan filled his head with lies
And promises, and suggested he disguise
Himself as a woman and find employ
In the Princess’s bathhouse. O what joy
He could derive, shampooing the women’s hair
And massaging their bodies, what rare
pleasures he would undoubtedly derive
With a permanent hard, what a way to be alive!
So Nasuh did just that. He spent his days
In lustful heaven, to Satan be praise!
Except that soon he heard the voice of his own guilt
Which whispered, “Nasuh you are damned, you built
Your pleasure dome on quicksand, it could sink
If you are caught and executed. Think!”
And foreswear Satan, shun the horned beast
Who leads to famine disguised as a feast.
Hearing this, young Nasuh turned to pray
Acknowledging that he had lost his way.
He sought the advice of a Sufi guide
Who said that men who ran could seldom hide.
The Sufi said that prayer would intervene
And show him pleasures he had never seen
Nasuh, though chastised, felt like a trapped cur.
Next day the bathhouse was in a mighty stir
The Princess was missing a pair of pearls
The suspects were, of course, the bathhouse girls.
The poor girls were told that they’d be whipped
If they did not submit, so they were stripped.
Nasuh was shampooing a lady’s head
And feasting on this naked female spread
And losing concentration Nasuh dropped
The shampoo kettle and his client stopped
Looking in the mirror and turned round
And Nasuh knew that he would now be found
Out and began running towards the door,
When the head eunuch said, “None can leave the floor!
Till I say so and you, take off your robe!”
The game was up, the attendant would probe
His body and delve every orifice
The eunuch asked Nasuh, “Now, what’s amiss?”
The only way out now was to confess
That he had several times seen the Princess
Naked as a blossom, from toe to tits
A crime for which he would be chopped to bits.
His heart sank as though it were made of stone
His stomach cramped, he felt very alone
And just as he surrendered to his fate
A eunuch shouted, “Found them! God is great!”
So did he dodge the executioner’s sword?
And did he drop and give praise to the Lord?
You bet! He prayed, “I thought my time had come,
Forgive, forgive . . .” but Nasuh was struck dumb.
He would forever be downcast, alone
Knowing only he knows, what he has known.
DON’T ASK
My friend
My fellow traveler
Don’t ask where I go
The only logical answer
Unhelpful and yet not,
Is that I do not know.
A pen is
An instrument
It doesn’t know how to write
Does a ball
Ever know
The trajectory of its flight?
The drunk and
The policeman
Are characters in this play
Pieces on a
Chessboard
Can only move in a certain way.
THE WILL TO DROWN
Desire and your longings will bring you to a fall
Why fear falling, my friend, isn’t it after all
Like willing yourself to drown in God and go to
paradise,
To a haven under the waters or a garden in the
skies?
What ecstasy it is to be pierced by the glance
The arrow from a lover’s eye, the wound that makes
you dance,
O Heart, what difference then, between joy and pain?
Opposites are identical and logic is in vain.
LOSE ALL DESIRE
But for her, your lover wills that you lose all desire
Love, when at its brightest, seeks to quench the fire
Dissolution in that love, they say, resembles death,
Yet it is the paradise where single hearts draw
breath.
HOME
A bird of the rock and sea may come to rest
And take shelter in a tree-bird’s nest
And still hear the echoes of shells in her ear
The music by which the seagulls steer
So fly from the nest and leave the tree
Behind. Wing your way to eternity
Leave Adam trapped in his garden home
And Issah blessed to walk on the foam.
BE UNSUBTLE
O thinker addicted to subtle thoughts
Adding infinities and subtracting noughts
Your mind can make angels dance on a pin
O turn to the thoughtless spirit within!
BROTHERS
All brothers should be like grapes on a vine
Pressed together, yielding their wine
The ripe ones hide the green ones taste
&n
bsp; Even imperfection doesn’t go to waste.
SKEPTIC
O Skeptic who sees nothing in empty space
Think now of infinity as God’s face
The images will come if you open your mind
To His word alone and leave doubt behind.
The Baptist’s mother came to Mary and said
You shall bear a Son through whom God will raise
the dead
The child and that faith in Mary grew
And Issah was born to heal me and you.
EQUALS
O Muslim, when you stand in the rank of prayer,
You are the fabric of all others, indivisible as the air
The Messenger of God has made you as one
You who were divided, son against son.
THE WORD IS ALL
The Holy Book says, “If the sea were to become ink . . .”
And all feathers quill pens, O mortals, do not think,
A syllable could be written to displace the Word
Given to the Messenger and subsequently heard
By writers and poets whose words must, alas, fade
Leaving only His Truth which at your feet is laid.
ON THE JOURNEY
Follow your Guide, Traveler, don’t trust to the map
These highways and low ways are prone to mishap
We all travel down the ways we haven’t been before
So trust to Him and follow—he’ll take you, door to
door.
BE PATIENT
The child wants the breast at once, it hasn’t learned
to wait
Patience is the key to joy, O Traveler, hesitate!
OPPOSITES
In seeing darkness, O Rumi, you know the light;
You know happiness by feeling sorrow’s bite
All meaning hides, till its opposite is known
Save God, with no opposite, He is hidden, alone.
WEAR THE CROWN LIGHTLY
To wear a crown lightly is to be a king
Regardless and regarded as the real thing