THE SPIRIT
OF INDIA
LAMENTS
The souls candle is quenched in the lamp of India: | |
Indians are strangers to Indias fair repute, | 2600 |
its manikins not intimate with their selfs secrets, | |
their plectrum plucks but rarely at their strings. | |
They fasten their eyes upon the past, | |
their hearts would glow from an extinguished fire. | |
Because of them I am bound hand and foot, | 2605 |
they are the reason for my unavailing laments; | |
they have estranged themselves from their selfhood, | |
they have made a prison of ancient customs. | |
Humanity is pained by their existence: | |
the new age is outraged by their clean and unclean. | 2610 |
Have done with the poverty that bestows nakedness; | |
blessed is the poverty which bestows true power. | |
Beware of constraint and of the habit of patience; | |
constraint is poison to both constrainer and constrained | |
the latter becomes habituated to patience, | 2615 |
the former becomes habituated to constraint; | |
for both the pleasure of oppression increases | |
and I can only repeat, Ah, would that my people knew! | |
When shall Indias night give place to day? | |
Jaafar is dead, but his spirit is living still; | 2620 |
as soon as it escapes from the chains of one body | |
at once it makes its nest in another flesh. | |
Now it makes concord with the church, | |
anon it turns entreating to the templars; | |
its creed, its cult are nothing but commerce, | 2625 |
an Antar got up in the robes of Haidar. | |
As the world changes in scent and colour, | |
even so its customs and usages change; | |
In former times it bowed before other gods, | |
in our days its idol is the fatherland. | 2630 |
Outwardly it is anguished for the Faith, | |
inwardly it wears the thread like the templars. | |
Jaafar, in whatever body, murders the nation; | |
this good old Moslem murders the nation. | |
He is always smiling, and is friends with none; | 2635 |
let a snake smile, it is still a snake. | |
His treachery divided the peoples unity; | |
his nation is demeaned by the fact of his being. | |
Whenever a nation is devastated | |
the root of its ruin is a Sadiq or a Jaafar. | 2640 |
God save me from the spirit of Jaafar, | |
save me from the Jaafars of the present time! |