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IBLIS: LEADER OF THE PEOPLE OF SEPARATION APPEARS
| The company of the radiant of heart is for a breath or two, | |
| that breath or two is the substance of being and not-being; | 2430 |
| it made love more tumultuous, and then passed, | |
| endowed reason with vision, and then passed. | |
| I closed my eyes to hold it still within me, | |
| to transport it from my eyes to my heart. | |
| Suddenly I saw the world had become dark, | 2435 |
| become dark from space even to spacelessness. | |
| In that night a flame appeared | |
| from the midst of which an old man leaped forth | |
| wrapped in a cloak of antimony grey, | |
| his body immersed in wreathing smoke. | 2440 |
| Rumi said, ‘The Leader of the People of Separation! | |
| How all a-fire, and what a cup of blood! | |
| Ancient, seldom smiling, of few words, | |
| his eyes scanning the soul within the body, | |
| drunkard and mullah, philosopher and Sufi, | 2445 |
| in practice like a toiling ascetic, | |
| his nature alien to the joy of union, | |
| his asceticism the abandonment of eternal beauty; | |
| since it was not easy to break away from beauty, | |
| he made a beginning with spurning adoration. | 2450 |
| Gaze a little at his visitations, | |
| gaze at his difficulties, his tenacity | |
| still absorbed in the battle of good and evil, | |
| he has seen a hundred prophets, and is an infidel yet.’ | |
| My soul in my body quivered for his agony; | 2455 |
| a sigh of anguish broke from his lips. | |
| With eyes half-closed he turned to me and said; | |
| ‘Who besides me has so gloried in action? | |
| I have become so involved in labour | |
| that even on the sabbath I am rarely at rest, | 2460 |
| I have no angels, no servants attending me; | |
| my revelation is without benefit of prophets. | |
| I have brought neither Traditions nor Book; | |
| I have robbed theologians of their sweet soul. | |
| None ever spun finer than they the thread of religion. | 2465 |
| yet in the end they left the Kaaba a heap of bricks. | |
| My religion has no such foundation; | |
| in the faith of Iblis there are no schisms and sects. | |
| Ignorant one, I have given up prostration, | |
| I have turned the organ of good and evil. | 2470 |
| Do not take me for one who denies God’s existence; | |
| open your eyes on my inner self, overlook my exterior. | |
| If I say, "He is not", that would be foolishness, | |
| for when one has seen, one cannot say, "He is not". | |
| Under the veil of "No" I murmured "Yes"; | 2475 |
| what I have spoken is better than what I never said. | |
| To share in the pain and suffering of Adam | |
| I did not forgo the fury of the Beloved. | |
| Flames sprang forth from my sown field; | |
| man out of predestination achieved free-will. | 2480 |
| I displayed my own hideousness | |
| and have given you the joy of leaving or choosing. | |
| Deliver me now from my fire; | |
| resolve, O man, the knot of my toil. | |
| You who have fallen into my noose | 2485 |
| and given to Satan the leave to disobey, | |
| live in the world with true manly zeal; | |
| as you pity me, live a stranger to me | |
| proudly disregarding my sting and my honey, | |
| so that my scroll may not become blacker still. | 2490 |
| In the world the huntsman lives on his prey; | |
| whilst you are my prey, I draw out my arrows. | |
| He who soars aloft is secure from falling: | |
| if the quarry is cunning, the huntsman will fail.’ | |
| ‘Give up this cult of separation’, I said to him. | 2495 |
| ‘The most hateful of things to God is divorce.’ | |
| He said, ‘The fire of separation is the stuff of life; | |
| how sweet the intoxication of the day of separation! | |
| The very name of union comes not to my lips; | |
| if I seek union, neither He remains nor I.’ | 2500 |
| The word ‘union’ made him out of himself; | |
| the burning agony was renewed in his heart. | |
| He wallowed awhile in his own fumes, | |
| he became lost again in his own fumes; | |
| out of those fumes whirling a lament rose high; | 2505 |
| how blessed the soul that can feel anguish! |
