English
On Regret and Remorse, and the Many Lessons Within
What a shame! My life has been thrown to the wind, and my own carelessness has done me such injustice.
I never knew the worth of my life's precious coin; how sad, I gambled that coin away.
Neglect gave my days to the wind. Justice! Justice, from the hand of neglect! Justice, justice!
With my crooked thinking I earned nothing but deprivation and a veil, all from the cravings of my ego.
From this grief all I have gained is sighing, and a longing that only wears the soul away.
My heart aches with the pain of sin. To whom can I tell my story? Alas, alas!
Alas for this regret: with my own hand I put my own head to the sword, cutting it from my own body.
No one in the world but me flung his honor to the wind, scattered like dust on the road by the fire of Satan.
The trap of this world caught the bird of my heart; my mind stayed busy with this person and that.
I turned bad, I grew close to wicked people; know this: I let my heart lose all control.
The shameful things I have done, how could even the bell ringing Christians approve of them?
The unworthy deeds I have done would be counted as sin even by the people of Rome and China.
One cannot even speak of it among the Arabs; among the Persians it would be a tale that melts the soul.
East and West both feel shame at it: the believers of Syria and the fire worshippers of Tartary alike.
If anyone suspects me of sin, what sin in the world could be worse than this?
That I grew heedless of the true God, and wasted a whole lifetime, old now and empty.
Since I did nothing worthwhile in my time, let the wheel of fortune scatter me to the wind for what I deserve.
Truly, in all the lands of Khorasan and Iraq there is no rebel, no disowned man, quite like me.
This woman, the world, stole the cap right off my head; shame on the man who ends up complaining of a woman.
Whether my lineage is noble or from Hijaz, I have no remedy left but burning and melting away.
In my heedlessness I turned the Kaaba into a temple; I could no longer tell good from evil.
I made the divine throne into a pagan shrine, and tied the belt of unbelief around my waist.
I fell for the Christian bell; like a monk I walked away from the clear word of God.
I served the priest and the monk; I did a hundred things worse than that dervish of Sanan.
With the cross before me I bowed to the idol; for a long life I practiced idol worship.
In the monasteries I feasted day and night; in the mosques I raised pigs and dogs.
My own father gave me counsel time and again, and each time those words fell like chains on my heart.
I put iron shackles on his feet. Would any man of sense ever do such a thing?
For years I kept him in misery; I mistook the guardian for a thief.
I snatched the crown of honor from his head and threw a garment of pitch black shame over him.
My mother was left wronged by my cruelty, robbed of her beauty and her dignity.
That crowned one lost her honor; by the fire of my injustice she was laid low in the dust.
I dragged her out of paradise into a furnace room, and sewed her a shirt of coarse sackcloth.
Once her face shone lovely as the moon; the soot of the furnace turned it black as her hair.
Once she was wealthy, a princess, with a hundred thousand servants and free retainers.
My cruelty and injustice made her a beggar; the misery of the furnace room tore her heart to shreds.
Once, with countless splendor and grace, she drank milk and sugar from golden cups.
Now in this furnace, from the cup of sighs, she swallows the fire of grief, hour after hour.
I have wronged my brother beyond all measure; no, not my brother, I have wronged my own self.
With my failings I devoured his flesh and blood, in death and in life alike.
I labored so that the fire worshippers of Tartary could humble and disgrace the people of faith.
I hurt the moon faced ones of Rome, and nurtured the foul and the ill natured.
I drove the nightingale and the dove out of the garden and gave the nest to the owl and the crow.
I cut down the branches of the fig with my blade, and, alas, I nourished the roots of bitterness.
The rosebush of my striving showed me only thorns; I had not realized the rose comes with the thorn.
By the ugliness of my own deeds I have made myself deserve to be stoned by every man and woman.
My desires were honey laced with poison: sweet on the surface, murderous underneath.
What I did to myself, I have earned; let them burn me with oil and straw, and I accept it.
The demon of heedlessness lit the fire of grief, and burned up all I owned, the dry and the green alike.
In my ignorance I struck the axe against my own foot. Whom can I blame, when I struck the blow myself?
I am helpless and lost in my own affairs, deeply wounded, but wounded by my own hand.
For all the wrongs I did, in the end God showed me the path to well being.
He stripped the garment of rebellion from my body and clothed me in the shirt of His own gnosis.
The army of His grace plundered my abasement, and from renouncing both worlds He crowned me.
Through the grace of the master Bayazid, I found my way back to the master Bayazid's road.
His grace kept company even with an unbeliever, and a hundred year old infidel became a keeper of the secret.
If the light of that sun falls upon a demon, in an instant it makes him lovelier than an angel of paradise.
If it draws near to the blazing hellfire, then hell forever becomes the highest paradise.
I fall silent about describing His graces, for in their perfection they cannot be put into words.