English
Pure Wine
Ask for the clear wine, my soul, for drinking the dregs is hard.
Give me some sign of the wine-server, since there are so many drunks here.
In the end this passion for love will cost you your head.
When your head itself is going, master, why worry about the turban?
You must draw out some coin from your full purse;
such work suits a light-fingered thief, a skilled pickpocket.
A night-watchman cried out at every man's shop:
Don't be careless tonight, master, the guard is in league with the thief.
Since the king has become the thieves' friend, bring the thieves good news:
no hands or feet are cut off, there is no prison and no gallows.
That king gave the good news: do not be afraid, you empty-handed ones,
for the treasure of the Merciful's mercy is scattered upon every sinner.
At night, when the king himself goes about spying in disguise,
only one who is himself a roaming night-rogue learns this secret.
When you stand at the Resurrection, your sins will come to light.
Don't be afraid of that, you rebel, for your Lord covers over faults.
Why grieve, servant, when in the end, out of grace and generosity,
your God is the buyer of you, faults and all?
God says: my servant, I am that king full of kindness,
so that whenever you come to my threshold, you are granted audience.
If the lover's face turns pale, it is neither jaundice nor consumption;
the physician of lovers knows what he is really sick with.
Drink so much of love's wine that you can't tell your head from your feet,
for those drunk in the Presence are ashamed of being sober.
When the camel gets drunk, it shuts its mouth to the fodder;
if you are drunk on God, why is your greed still set on thorns?
If you are drunk, you dance your way across the desert;
if you are sober, you fear that the road to the Kaaba is full of thorns.
You make one pilgrimage a year, but in the street of our Beloved
the one who is a suffering lover completes a pilgrimage every moment.
Circle the Kaaba, pilgrim, and leave me in her street,
for the lover's greatest pilgrimage is circling the Beloved's street.
Martyrs are not washed for burial; so do not stay alive, Mohyi,
for in the creed of the free-spirited, whoever has died is mere carrion.