Third Opening: Beauty and Devotion

Last night your beauty arranged the splendor of the garden; before the boxwood of your stature, the cypress kept rising and bowing in awe. Even the shadow of kohl, being a stranger, cannot enter the corner of your eye, for it is the bridal chamber of modesty. My longing's regret cannot reach the level of your collar; the word that would loosen your knot stays trapped in the fold of your robe. Whoever wants your pain measured to their endurance will gain no pain worthy of its cure. Like Mount Sinai at the moment of revelation, my patience is lost; holding my heart steady before you is beyond the reach of my strength. Lovers, do not swallow the dust of the beautiful ones' promises; the letter of union with idols rides on the wing of the Simorgh of fidelity. If my impatient heart does not take offense at the truth: where is the limit of my love, and where the limit of your beauty? My love is greater than anything that can be said, yet I cannot ask for you in the measure that your beauty deserves. With beauty like this, do not forbid me my desire, for to see you and not fall in love is something only God could do. The cloud draws its substance from the sea, but my eye is a lash, a cloud whose wealth is a hundred seas. Each eye spends the blood of my heart separately; it is wrong to say that separate purses mean separate bowls. Lost in the valley of love, put no cotton in your ears; the one robbing this caravan is the sound of the traveling bell. Whatever your merciless glance did to my wounded heart, the look from the corner of your eyes apologized for it all. For lifetimes I have sown the seed of faithfulness in my heart for you; what I have harvested is only the crop of your cruelty. My heart's ripeness lay in resting on your fidelity; what burns me now is the raw hope of that fidelity. Though I am unfulfilled by you, I am glad that, through devotion to the king of men, my breath finds fulfillment in both worlds. Ali, the high in rank, king of the realm of guardianship, for whose verses of glory both worlds are too narrow a space. When his majesty appears in the revelation of attributes, the mind, from the abundance of thought, falls into ruin and lack. Sedition wants to hide itself in its own embrace, in a place where his shoe scatters drops upon the sea. The ocean sweats with shame before his hand; when did a single drop ever own the grandeur of the sea? Before his face the sun lays its hand upon its eyes; how could a mote bear to play at gazing on the sun? The essence of the rose does not unknit its frown, since it heard that he is the deputy of the court of destiny. God knows this, and so does that deputy of God's decree; over this question, unbelief raises an uproar against faith. The nine heavens look like an imagined point to the eye beside the palace of his glory, which the world cannot equal. Where his worth pitches its tent on the plain of appearance, the divine throne, out of courtesy, hides behind a wall. In wishing for the bounty of his hand drawn from desire's pearl, the skirt of poverty is more precious than the pocket of wealth. It is the dome of his court whose loftiness gives the wheel of heaven a place within the shade of its wall. The shadow of his roof at last fell over the head of the sky; see now how the owl's egg rests in the shade of the phoenix. His honor did not become the caravan-leader of existence only now; from the day of eternity his worth has set the chain of destiny in motion. If the sky confuses your street with the Kaaba, it is from lack of discernment, for it cannot tell its left hand from its right. At the Kaaba's gate, your worth is the people's prayer-direction, where ring upon ring of seeing eyes are fixed. I wear the servant's ring in my ear and feel proud, for the fame of this ring reaches even heaven's ear. The lancet of your generosity drew red blood from the vein of the mine; out of envy at your giving, a fever burns through the body. When the hand of your court boasts of its bounty, the dust at your door is fuller than the mine, while the sea hangs its head in shame. Even the water of your sword cannot quench his thirst; the sickness of one who envies your rank must be an unending dropsy. Whenever the lightning of your sword leaps from the cloud of its sheath, your enemy's army is promised a downpour of disaster. One who envies your rank never loses the road to oblivion, for the edge of your curved blade keeps the road straight. The substance of your blade is held in the salamander's egg; that is why in the fire-temple it has its place, raining down sparks. Your enemy saw the flame of God's wrath in your sword; if he confessed it to be the Hand of God, he spoke the truth. Until your sword turned curved, the path of God was not made straight; the arch of your blade is the prayer-guide in the valley of faith. Your friends never even glimpse the flame of your sword in dreams; the attention of your blade's edge is reserved for your foes. When the egg of your sword's substance hatches its chick of death, its drink is the enemy's heart-blood, its food his brains. The promises death has made through your arrowhead, until they pierce your enemy's heart, when will they come true? It travels as a messenger only toward the enemy's chest; on the wings and feathers of your arrow is bound the letter of annihilation. Do not toughen your eye like armor, for it cannot be turned back; the word of your arrow against the foe is the decree of fate. Its word struck hard in the heart of one who wished you ill; the arrow that deceives the enemy has a tongue that grips. Why does it keep moaning at the shortness of its luck, the head of your enemy, when it reaches the saddle-straps of your lasso? I do not know what the lance whispered into your steed's ear, for every single strand of his hair rose up in playful delight. That swift one, when he sets his hoof in the eye, you would say the image of the soul appears in the mirror of the heart. So hot in his gallop that when he lays his neck to the rein, what comes to his mind is the morning breeze itself. So bold-eyed that, struck by the harm of his narrow envy, the one who lays a hand on his back has it stained as if with henna. He will not yield himself to be watched, for like the deer of a glance, by the time you lift your lashes he has vanished from sight. If the steed of life were to borrow speed from him, then the eternal life of Khizr would be worth only a single breath of breeze. How could he not be restless in his light, leaping motion, when his hoof is flint and the field of the sky is full of glass? If he should drive a nail into the eye of the crescent moon with his horseshoe, it would befit hands and feet stained the henna-color of the dawn-twilight's blood. Since I have given up on both worlds for him, I have judged it right that the new moon is half a horseshoe, of one color with his own. Neither fire nor water can harm him, for like the wind he passes now over a fire-temple, now over the sea. On his head the tuft of his forelock is like a flame, you would say a lock of scattered smoke in the hand of the breeze. Did the wind of a sigh tangle and break his hair? Did the color of shyness leap from its place at a single glance? On this saddle, his back is adorned like a peacock; the two stirrups on either side are the ring of a virgin's eye. Madness speaks through the wild tangle of Majnun's hair, while Layla's curling locks are a chain that binds the mane. The curl of the mane lifts grief from a love-stricken heart; each knot in the strand untangles a tightness of the soul. When his tousled forelock shows itself off, it leads the way for the scattered tresses of the brides of distant Cathay. His charge tears a breach through the very heart of all creation, and his neigh strikes rust off the heart of victory and triumph. Yes, the eyes of triumph all watch for the print of his hoof; the face of victory shows clear in the mirror of his shoe. If the dust of his road wipes the rust from the heart of the ages, it has every right, for that dust gives the sun its mirror's shine. No one has seen an eye like his, except your own high resolve, which in a single step can rise beyond both worlds. You whose every word becomes the adornment of speech: until you spoke, hidden meaning dared not unveil its face. On the palate of the eloquent, all speech was tasteless, until the salt of your eloquent word gave taste its true flavor. The pearl of your word is so brimming with abundance that whole shoals of meaning swim through it like waves. Others measure their speech against yours, for in the sea of language the pearl of your word stands alone. The thought of the masters of speech is lofty, true, but the distance from mere magic to true miracle is vast. Your speech is a glowing night-jewel; in its light the ear, like the eye, can see the secrets of meaning. A spring of sweet drink boils up from the ear of my heart, brimming with honey from the sweetness of your words. Your book is a wondrous land in the realm of speech, its very air and water made of Jesus' breath and Khizr's water of life. A land of abundance: in the shade of its fountainhead, for ages Khizr has waited for the water of eternal life. The ruled lines of its pages are a flowing channel of grace; in place of pebbles, pearls of meaning glitter there. Both worlds wear, ring-like, the hook of its curved letters in their ears; in the hand of the sage Reason, each alif is a staff. The loop of its 'meem' is sweet as the ruby lips of the lovely; the curve of its 'noon' is like the arch of an idol's brow. Its subtle themes are kohl for the world-seeing eye; its eloquent meanings are the script and beauty-spot on fair faces. Your nature set the alphabet of knowledge in motion by God's own teaching, for it was groomed in the school of eternity. The Universal Intellect held the tablet of letters in its hand while the child of your nature was adorning the school of eternity. The pen of your reason needs no practice-sheet; even the First Intellect is an old copy of fate's design. The knowledge of both worlds embraces only emptiness, wherever your depth rises to be weighed in the mind. No one's understanding can reach to grasp your depth; this is a bride who sits in the bridal chamber of God's own knowledge. Longing for your pure resting place burns my heart, for in that garden the whole world's wealth lies beneath my feet. How blessed is that radiant garden, in whose shade one can see where the key to the door of paradise lies. If the sun grows dim, its shrine still has its lamp; if the heavens collapse, its dome stands firm. When its servant comes out at dusk, lamp in hand, you would say the banner of your dawn had risen in the east. Burnt wings and feathers fall on every side from the angels, when its servant once more lights the candle's face anew. When Moses saw this candle's smoke from afar, he wondered if a lamp was shining once more on Mount Sinai. The throne and the heavens circle his head like the sky; the sun's heart bleeds with envy at his golden lamp. For the sun to claim it rivals his candle is a sickness; for the sky to imagine it matches his lamp's smoke is madness. So high is the dome of his worth that even with all my striving, the head of my thought barely reaches the strap of his saddle. Even if walking your road leaves a blister on my foot, I would not trade it for the garden of paradise. Though I am less than a speck in both worlds, why grieve, when my heart, lit by your love, shines like the sun? The talk of your love is the prayer on my tongue and heart; why grieve if all my devotion comes down to this one task? My back bent with the grief of loving you, and I am glad, for in my whole life this is the only prayer I have truly performed. I will not complain to you of the sky's coldness, for it is only dust that one day rose up from your road. I do not press a claim of love before you for some reward, for even in my failure, a hundred wishes are granted to me by you. This much from you is wish enough for me: that one day I hear from your own lips that Fayyaz is the dog of our alley. From eternity the ring of your servitude is in my ear; from the curl of your hair, chains hang around my soul's neck. I am the dog on your chain; to whom can I boast of faith? My fate is in your hands; through whom else could my work go right? You hold up both worlds, and I have fallen, helpless; if you do not take my hand, I cannot rise. I will fold up the tale of longing for you, leaving it unsaid, for the step of prayer is dearer to me than this duty of words. As long as the brow of dawn glows with light, as long as the moon's polish strips the rust from night's mirror, may the morning of friends be bright with this good news: that your moonlike face is the moonlight, and your enemies the dead grass. Night and dawn, my chant is the work of praying for you, as long as the color of answered prayer shows on dawn's face.