On the Oneness of God

You who invented these nine circling spheres, and whose grace nurtures every being in the world. No one walks without pockets and arms full of your bounty, ever since your generosity opened its shop. While your kindness, like a nurse, pours milk into its throat, the garden's rose opens its mouth like a child. Your grace is a sage whose single glance gives even smoke the alchemical power of gold. Describing you, my speaking tongue is like the wild lily; you would think it grew no tongue at all for speech. However far I look, from your grace were born every particle of the earth and every moment of time. On the road toward your essence, at the very first station, the feet of all travelers sink into the mud. On your path, the practical mind, through the force of worship, has shot an arrow and fumbled for the target. The theoretical mind has washed its face in your ocean, yet it stays at the shore and has never seen the depths. They say: since the made world is a certainty, reason can infer its Maker through thought and reflection. But isn't reason itself part of the made world? How can the made carry a trace back to its Maker! What better proof than his own existence to establish the Lord of earth and time? Since there is no one but you, what can I say of a partner? Oneness is enough; let us just close our mouths. The foundations of both worlds were born from you, O true foundation of all the world from head to foot. You are present before yourself, and the whole world is from you; to deny such knowledge is beyond the tongue's power. The believers in God's bodily form lie trampled under blame, since your essence is what created place itself. Since on the road to your nobility it is but a thread of illusion, the lowly bondage of the parts of time. You who claim knowledge, you cannot even give voice and expression to knowing your own self. It is ignorance, not knowledge, to try to prove the Lord of the world through fancies and imaginings. The knot of your prayer beads solves nothing; if you are a true wayfarer, untie the knot of your own soul's thread. From fixed stars and planets comes nothing but knots; better dust on your sight than that you gaze at the heavens. Since burning has never been your lot, you cannot know the state of a heart scorched among the burned. See, intoxicated, on his road, how the chained waves dance, the flowing water with a fetter on its feet. Climbing the gallows is the first step on his road; do not mock those who share Mansur's nature. O existence of those who vanished on the road of longing for you, O name and trace of every heart without name or trace. Both your love, the lover, and the beloved are all you; you are the knower and the known of this hidden secret. Who pours the wine of spirits into the cup of bodies? You are the cupbearer, you the tavern, you the soul's wine. On your road I am that lost one, without heart or faith, so shamed I cannot even speak my name and trace. Brighten my sight with the kohl of true knowing, enough that I may tell certainty apart from mere guessing. Give me so much wine of restlessness from the grace of eternity that I may wet the lips of my thirsting soul with it. When the Generous One asks me this question, I will say: the one drunk on the open vision knows nothing of mere knowledge.