Followers

Thursday 29 January 2009

PERSIAN PRINCE






Georgian-prince by
Reza-Abbas
Andaluz- Quaran
"I am only the house of your beloved,
not the beloved herself:
true love is for the treasure,
not for the coffer that contains it."
The real beloved is that one who is unique,
who is your beginning and your end.
When you find that one,
you'll no longer expect anything else:
that is both the manifest and the mystery.
That one is the lord of states of feeling,
dependent on none;
month and year are slaves to that moon.
When he bids the "state,"
it does His bidding;
when that one wills, bodies become spirit.


Mathnawi III, 1417-1424


When the rose is gone and the garden faded
you will no longer hear the nightingale's song.
The Beloved is all; the lover just a veil.
The Beloved is living; the lover a dead thing.
If love withholds its strengthening care,
the lover is left like a bird without care,
the lover is left like a bird without wings.
How will I be awake and awareif the light of the Beloved is absent?
Love wills that this Word be brought forth.

Mathnawi I, 23-31


I have been tricked by flying too close
to what I thought I loved.

Now the candleflame is out, the wine spilled,
and the lovers have withdrawn
somewhere beyond my squinting.

The amount I thought I'd won, I've lost.
My prayers becomes bitter and all about blindness.

How wonderful it was to be for a while

with those who surrender.

Others only turn their faces on way,
then another, like pigeon in flight.

I have known pigeons who fly in a nowhere,

and birds that eat grainlessness,

and tailor who sew beautiful clothes
by tearing them to pieces.

(Mathnawi, V. 346-353)

Wednesday 28 January 2009

WHEN SHE BLOWS




The lily has an air,


And the snowdrop a grace,


And the sweetpea a way,


And the heartsease a face,


-Yet there's nothing like the rose


When she blows.