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PRAYER
| Man, in this world of seven hues, | |
| lute-like is ever afire with lamentation; | |
| yearning for a kindred spirit burns him inwardly | |
| teaching him threnodies to soothe the heart, | |
| and yet this world, that is wrought of water and clay— | 5 |
| how can it be said to possess a heart? | |
| Sea, plain, mountain, grass–all are deaf and dumb, | |
| deaf and dumb heaven and sun and moon; | |
| though the stars swarm in the selfsame sky | |
| each star is more solitary than the other, | 10 |
| each one is desperate just as we are, | |
| a vagrant lost in an azure wilderness— | |
| the caravan unprovisioned against the journey, | |
| the heavens boundless, the nights interminable. | |
| Is this world then some prey, and we the huntsmen, | 15 |
| or are we prisoners utterly forgotten? | |
| Bitterly I wept, but echo answered never: | |
| where may Adam’s son find a kindred spirit? | |
| I have seen that the day of this dimensioned world | |
| whose light illuminates both palace and street | 20 |
| came into being from the flight of a planet, | |
| is nothing more, you might say, than a moment gone. | |
| How fair is the Day that is not of our days, | |
| the Day whose dawn has neither noon nor eve! | |
| Let its light illuminate the spirit | 25 |
| and sounds become visible even as colours; | |
| hidden things become manifest in its splendour, | |
| its watch is unending and intransient. | |
| Grant me that Day, Lord, even for a single day, | |
| deliver me from this day that has no glow! | 30 |
| Concerning whom was the Verse of Subjection revealed? | |
| For whose sake spins the azure sphere so wildly? | |
| Who was it knew the secret of He taught the names? | |
| Who was intoxicated with that saki and that wine? | |
| Whom didst Thou choose out of all the world? | 35 |
| To whom didst Thou confide the innermost secret? | |
| O Thou whose arrow transpierced our breast, | |
| who uttered the words Call upon me, and to whom? | |
| Thy countenance is my faith, and my Koran: | |
| dost Thou begrudge my soul one manifestation? | 40 |
| By the loss of a hundred of its rays | |
| the sun’s capital is in no wise diminished. | |
| Reason is a chain fettering this present age: | |
| where is a restless soul such as I possess? | |
| For many ages Being must twist on itself | 45 |
| that one restless soul may come into being. | |
| Except you fret away at this brackish soil | |
| it is not congenial to the seed of desire; | |
| count it for gain enough if a single heart | |
| grows from the bosom of this unproductive clay! | 50 |
| Thou art a moon: pass within my dormitory, | |
| glance but once on my unenlightened soul. | |
| Why does the flame shrink away from the stubble? | |
| Why is the lightning-flash afraid to strike? | |
| So long as I have lived, I have lived in separation: | 55 |
| reveal what lies beyond yon azure canopy; | |
| open the doors that have been closed in my face, | |
| let earth share the secrets of heaven’s holy ones. | |
| Kindle now a fire within my breast- | |
| leave be the aloe, and consume the brushwood, | 60 |
| then set my aloe again upon the fire | |
| and scatter my smoke through all the world. | |
| Stir up the fire within my goblet, | |
| mingle one glance with this inadvertency. | |
| We seek Thee, and Thou art far from our sight; | 65 |
| no, I have erred-we are blind, and Thou art present. | |
| Either draw aside this veil of mysteries | |
| or seize to Thyself this sightless soul! | |
| The date-tree of my thought despairs of leaf and fruit; | |
| either despatch the axe, or the breeze of dawn. | 70 |
| Thou gavest me reason, give me madness too, | |
| show me the way to inward ecstasy. | |
| Knowledge takes up residence in the thought, | |
| love’s lodge is the unsleeping heart; | |
| so long as knowledge has no portion of love | 75 |
| it is a mere picture-gallery of thoughts. | |
| This peep-show is the Samiri’s conjuring-trick; | |
| knowledge without the Holy Ghost is mere spellbinding. | |
| Without revelation no wise man ever found the way, | |
| he died buffetted by his own imaginings; | 80 |
| without revelation life is a mortal sickness, | |
| reason is banishment, religion constraint. | |
| This world of mountain and plain, ocean and land— | |
| we yearn for vision, and it speaks of report. | |
| Grant to this vagrant heart a resting-place, | 85 |
| restore to the moon this fragment of the moon. | |
| Though from my soil nothing grows but words, | |
| the language of banishment never comes to an end. | |
| Under the heavens I feel myself a stranger: | |
| from beyond the skies utter the words I am near, | 90 |
| that these dimensions, this north and this south, | |
| like to the sun and moon in the end may set, | |
| I shall transcend the talisman of yesterday | |
| and tomorrow, transcend the moon, sun, Pleiades. | |
| Thou art eternal splendour; we are like sparks— | 95 |
| a breath or two we possess, and that too borrowed. | |
| You who know naught of the battle of death and life, | |
| who is this slave who would emulate even God? | |
| This slave, impatient, conquering all horizons, | |
| finds pleasure neither in absence nor in presence. | 100 |
| I am a momentary thing: make me eternal, | |
| out of my earthiness make me celestial. | |
| Grant me precision both in speech and action: | |
| the ways are clear- give me the strength to walk. | |
| What I have said comes from another world; | 105 |
| this book descends from another heaven. | |
| I am a sea; untumult in me is a fault; | |
| where is he who can plunge into my depths? | |
| A whole world slumbered upon my shore | |
| and saw from the strand naught but the surge of a wave. | 110 |
| I, who despair of the great sages of old, | |
| have a word to say touching the day to come! | |
| Render my speech easy unto the young, | |
| make my abyss for them attainable. |
