English
The Mill
Millstone, oh millstone, why are you as lost as we are?
Do not hide your secret from us; tell us the whole story.
You are drunk in your own turning, wise in your own circling.
What do you know about us, that you dance for us endlessly?
You were cut away from the mine, and so you moan, my hope.
Tell us, faithful one, how our own tale plays out.
You have a strange journey of your own, in a state of joy and ecstasy;
in a single breath you travel from beginning to end.
In these stories our soul lives on water, like a mill.
Our farsighted reason, where did you go? Come back.
Lose yourself, but do not lose the divine secrets of love.
You are both the new and the old, both the mountain and the cry and its echo.
You are the soul and you are the world, the stream and the flowing water,
the miller too, and the wheat, and the mill itself.
Love, you are the beloved of many souls, both enemy and friend;
you are in the core and in the skin, in short, with king and beggar alike.
You who know love's secrets, you its soaring Jafar,
you its Qasem of light, the alchemy that turns the soul's copper to gold.