Arabic Poems

You have raised beauty over the one lost in longing for you, and your grace towers proudly over the broken-hearted. You who humble whoever grows proud in your love: grant me too some share of your nearness. In you I have gone even further astray, and I have vanished; ever since I found my way in you I have kept losing it. Be gentle to the one you slay with those deadly glances; show kindness, be gracious. Return to peace with the one already slain; do not press on fighting a man you have already killed. You who are beautiful and beloved, your sanctuary stands lofty, unreachable, and your union impossible to attain. You appeared and then hid yourself in the very showing; you descended low and rose high in your majesty. You stretched out my shadow when your sun spread its light, and when you rolled that shadow up, it folded away. When you passed into the glory of the Glorious, no majesty was left empty of that Majestic One. Erase my outline, my form, my image, so that from the All I may seek one true likeness. O heart, make yourself ready to receive, and strip yourself at once of every attachment. Grow holy with the holiness of the One who shows himself in you as meaning, as form, as imagination. Become one, beyond all marks and descriptions; stand alone, beyond every attribute and fancy. Roll up the seven heavens like a scroll, and rise, in thought, above them all. Praise God when you behold the full moons; glorify God when you witness the new crescent. Forever I flee from you, to you; your threshold, my masters, is my only refuge. My love for the one I long for is my whole creed in the religion of love; I will never turn from that faith. Far be it from you to think that I could forget your love, or ever desire anyone but you. You who are the end of all seeking, the utmost of all wishes: from you I ask for nothing but yourself. My heart is in your hands, at your disposal; forever it turns however you turn it. It knows delight only in your union, and torment only in your distance and separation. Bitterness from you tastes sweet to the one who loves you, and your torment is a pleasure to him. So promise or threaten, favor or reject, be just: whatever you do is good, for all of it comes from you. I have no lineage, my masters, except to you; through you alone am I traced back even to what is not you. My eye sees no one but you; yet why do I see you veiled from your own self? Who has the right to complain of distance after your nearness, when you are closer to him than he is to himself? In your appearing my shadow was folded into your light; and by your light every hidden thing was cleared from me. From you my beginning began, and in me you hid yourself; I mean, for him I am the east, I am the west.

We were once sublime letters, then we came down into lowly lines of script. We appeared after being hidden, and now we have become all created things. In truth, the whole universe is nothing but us, for we are the beings, the things that are possible. So we became the worlds and their ranks, an essence, then a name for every attribute. We veiled ourselves from ourselves by ourselves, and after that we fell into troubles. We forgot the covenant of the days of union, and no longer remembered the vows of those bygone times. After that a messenger came from among us, announcing to us with his miracles. He called within us, to us, from us, back to us, and so we rose and climbed beyond all directions. We passed beyond pure souls, and beyond the ranks of essences that receive. We arrived, we joined, we became one with the very Essence; we became the Essence itself. In all the details, nothing but us was found, and likewise nothing else was found in the whole.

Your Essence appeared through the signs of the attributes, and all those attributes were made visible by the Essence. Yet the sun of the Essence remained hidden behind a veil, so how did the shadows of created things appear? By His perfection everything in existence becomes a display, and His beauty is manifest both within them and from them. He revealed Himself and yet hid within His own appearing; His lights are the very veils and coverings over Him. Through Him all the worlds unveiled themselves and came into view, and their unveiling springs from Him and returns openly to Him. His absence never truly parts Him from the eye that sees; the one who seems hidden is in fact present. From His veiled face a brilliant light still shines, and our eyes and our inner sight are never shut off from it. If you looked past the complaints and thanks of all people, you would see Him in every one who complains and every one who gives thanks. All beauty is the beauty of the one I love, and His beauty shines openly in every act of love. Beauty is a truth that comes from Him alone, and toward Him it returns from every patient lover. O cypress of the garden, O pure and slender branch, at the sway of your form my heart takes flight. What would Tayba, Sal', the sacred valley, the winding path and the mountain barrier be without you? What are these ruins without you? What is this settled land without the one who dwells there? My Mayya, my Salma, my Layla of the sanctuary are nothing but mirrors of your beauty and its displays. All lovely faces are thrones and reflections, landmarks and vistas of your beauty. You are the Beautiful; beauty truly belongs to you, in every thing seen, and you are the one who sees. O You outwardly manifest in your light, I am the hidden one; O You the First through your appearing, I am the Last.

You are my pain, and the escape from you leads back to you. In love's own ache, patience is found only through you. You are the rest of the heart amid its turmoil, the peace of the soul amid its helplessness. The heart of the one who loves you knows no stillness; the soul of the one who loves you finds no rest. What can he do who has no cunning left? What can he do who has no choice left? My heart turns as the pilgrim circles the shrine; my heart spins as love keeps it spinning. It belongs to the One around whom the heart circles, for whom it revolves like a secret kept close. With love, when it stops, the heart stops; with love, when it moves, the heart moves. It appears in one form when it shows itself, and hides in another when it withdraws. Its shape is its true shape when seen; its worth is its true worth when tested. Its power is the power of the One revealed within it; of itself it has neither rule nor might. He set it free and He bound it, and so it was; He likened and unlikened it, and so it became. He drew it near, turned it away, made it wide, made it narrow, without excuse or answer. From the vastness of the Truth and His beautiful names, the ignorant man stops at the barest fraction. Ask about my inner state, when the winds blow, from ships drifting bewildered across the seas. Or from a leaf snatched away by the east wind, tossed and tumbling through the empty wastes. I wandered and could not find the path on the right; I drifted and could not find the way on the left. You, my rest, guide the one who is lost in you. You, my pain, guide the one bewildered by you. You are the help for the one who has no help; you are the neighbor for the one who has no neighbor. You are the treasure for the one who has no treasure; you are the home for the one who has no home. You are the trusted one for the one who has none to trust; you are the counselor for the one who has none to advise him. The one to whom you belong needs nothing more; the one to whom you belong lacks nothing at all. I circled around your unreachable perfection; I turned about you through every kind of orbit. I stayed at the door on the promise of meeting; I lived by it, and died of the waiting. I said to those who dwell in the Beloved's land: you never woke to the meaning of these ruins. You settled instead for the tracings on the walls; you filled yourselves with the mere lot of stones. He cannot be confined to this one place; He cannot be enclosed within this enclosure. He cannot be pinned to any single mark, nor be shut up in any single direction. The sun rose, and existence shone forth; the cloud parted, and the veil fell away. The heart opened wide, and witnessing filled everything; the mind broke free from its brooding thought. The bounds of every fetter lifted from it, drawn away from the gaze of mere reckoning. We witness him in the darkness of night; we grasp him in the radiance of day. You understand him in the stillness of the mountains, hidden yet clothed in majesty. The morning breeze lets us hear him; it makes us drunk with him, without any wine. In you we hear the speech of the birds; through you we understand the songs of the nightingale. I rose for you when generosity came; I rose for you when the great ones arrived. We glimpse you when we behold the beautiful; we catch sight of you in the eyes of the fair. I tasted you in every delicious food, hidden, disguised, veiled in secret. From the pages of the universe, holding steady our stance, we recite you, we read you in the name of the Almighty. These are the stages of your appearances, behind a curtain of borrowed veils. We belong to the moment of your unveiling, not to the time of your hiding. Where are we, with you, and the garden of paradise? Where are we, with you, and the house of ruin? Every light burns away in your fire; every fire freezes in your light. Through you we broke the idol of modesty; through you we cast down the idol of pride. In you our shame becomes glory; in you our glory becomes shame. For you we put on the robe of blame; for you, disgraced, we tore away all restraint. The glory of your lovers lies in their abasement; the honor of those who long for you lies in their poverty. Their brokenness with you is their mending; their mending with you is their breaking. You wore the garb of the unbelievers and became a sun-worshipper, just as yesterday you came with Islam and faith. What is the seen and the seer, the worshipped and the worshipper, the object of prostration and the one who prostrates, but you, in disguise? The first time you wore the robe of name and attribute; another time you wore the robe of intellect and soul. After that you appeared clothed in spirits and forms; then you rose reckoned in the shape of throne and seat. Then, after our word, you showed yourself in heavens and angels, in bodies and elements, and there, at last, among mankind. You defined yourself in individual things, you took on shapes; and by what you revealed, you slipped beyond perception and sense. O you who are content with his attributes instead of his essence, and veiled from his essence by his attributes, O you who look away from the glance of that enchanting eye, whose glances rend all veils, Do not be satisfied with a single flash from his face; do not be content with one glimmer among his radiances. Lift the veil of attribute from the one described; from the giver, do not let his gifts hide you. O you who lift the veils from his face, resolved to be consumed by his glory, Look upon a bright, unveiled face, shining with the marvel of beauty in its manifestations. Do not be veiled from his essence by his light and his appearance, by his splendor and his brilliance. You who behold the lightning flashing on the horizon: it comes alive from Him, from one of His pulsing beats. You who cannot be effaced: a face has appeared unveiled, one that snatches away all sight with its glances. If you cannot see His radiance without veils, then look for Him in the clarity of His mirror. Whoever cannot see the light by which the whole universe came into being, let him look for the lamp within its niche. He owns all hearts through His grace and His beauty; He captures all minds through His power and His majesty. He appears with a face that outshines the morning sun, and with His crescent He lights the full moon of the dark night. The universe is a mole that emerged from His cheek, and His cheek itself was revealed by that very mole. I was already lost in love for Him before the human being was ever shaped from clay. You who showed us Your beauty made manifest, its wholeness unfolded into countless details: You are the beautiful One; through You all creation is adorned, and to You belongs beauty, complete in every perfection. You who gathered all graces into a single form, while Your lovers were humbled by Your coquetry: Whoever folds his darkness into Your light will never be veiled from Your light by his own shadow. If anyone but me could be content with only His image, I am the one who is never satisfied short of union with Him. You who are longed for even when You turn away, You who are loved when You turn toward us: If You wish, place Your grace in Jaber, Your lover, You who are praised in all Your deeds. You who are the goal of every hope, the sum of every wish, have mercy on one who is dying of longing for You. Have mercy on a sorrowing, resolute lover, alone with You, emptied of every thought and fancy but You. My masters, could there ever cross Your mind one in whose mind nothing crosses but You? Far be it from You to neglect the state of one who, in love for You, is heedless of his own state. Show tenderness to one who no longer knows his right path, so absorbed in You that he forgets all else and even his own straying. I witnessed His beauty within my own self, once my mirror was cleansed and polished. When His essence appeared in its purity, my essence and my attributes were hidden away within it. In His holiness my defilements were purified, and in His sun my atoms began to dance. My solitary hours were adorned with His beauty and majesty, His perfection and His union. My times were ennobled by His presence, and my moments honored by witnessing Him. My pillars trembled from His overpowering force, and my whole being was made firm by His grace. My joints were pulled apart by His disjoining, and my prayers were joined together by His arrival. From His fragrance the sweetness of every wish diffused, and from His knowing my Arafat came to know itself. My attributes were exchanged for His attributes, and my states were transformed by His qualities. His lights kindled my lamp, and from His radiance my niche shone bright. The fires within me were extinguished by his light, when the gardens of my soul opened at his appearing. So my banners were raised in honor, and my unfurled standards rose high. A face that shone, laughing and smiling, until all my darkness was folded away into its light. Oh healing breath, you are his breathing, hidden within the fragrance of gentle breezes. He was once a heart within me, but he vanished from my breast; I know neither his name nor his form. Has the beloved returned? I do not know how near the loved one is, lost as I am in the drunkenness of longing. Did he journey through a night of love and yearning toward the presence of the Remembered One, from the world of remembrance? Oh, if only I knew: will I win a union from the days of my youth, though I was raised upon stone and hardship? Oh, if only I knew: will I see him once within, and recover in that beloved what my life has lost? I have grown estranged from my people, scattered from my company, faltering in my speech, bewildered in my affair. I pass the day without spirit and the evening without reason; I rise without a heart and I sleep without patience. Perhaps for what has slipped from me in my heedlessness, I wander crying aloud among all creation. Has anyone seen a heart made pure, cleansed of doubt, denial, idolatry, and disbelief? Has anyone seen a heart unique in all existence? Has anyone seen a heart alone in all of time? Has anyone seen a heart lifted above illusion? Has anyone seen a heart risen beyond mere thought? Has anyone seen a heart that circles the inner kernel? Has anyone seen a heart that flees the empty husk? Has anyone seen a heart guarded from all people? Has anyone seen a heart forbidden to any stranger? Has anyone seen a heart that outshines the sun? Has anyone seen a heart that pours forth more than the full moon? Has anyone seen a heart that rules over everything? Has anyone seen a heart that stands as the pole of this age? Has anyone seen a heart honored with richness? Has anyone seen a heart made sovereign through poverty? Has anyone seen a phoenix from the sunset lands, longing for my flaws and yearning for my hidden self? Has anyone seen a dove clad in green, absent from thicket and nest in this age of purity? Has anyone seen a dove of the willows of the wilderness, inclining toward a mate she once had in the stony wild? Until it appears to my sight out of the unseen, until it reveals itself openly to me from its secret. And I said to him: Oh you for whom all existence yearns, you veil yourself from my eyes, and you have come from my dawn. And he said, unfolding: I was never far from you, but I am a return to the inward from the outward. I hid from my time, made myself unknown in my station, rose above my name, and transcended my rank. I swear by what lies between me and you in love, free of separation, distance, and parting. And what gathers us in the very source of union that unites, drawing together what was scattered and lifting the illusion of otherness. And it stirs the thirsty one who drank the surging floods of injustice yet was never quenched. My heart is guarded, kept safe from the husk of illusion; my inmost being never turns away from your love, never bends aside. My heart has a throne set above the throne itself; my spirit holds a kingdom that encompasses all kingdoms. The single Essence appeared clothed in the divine names, until it showed itself in every existing thing. The One is not made many by numbers, no, nor multiplied by any counting or repetition. Before I appeared, I was folded into unity; the Essence lay hidden within its own gathering. After I was sealed and closed shut, I was adorned and then unsealed, opened out. The world came into being through our self-disclosure; existence dawned from our descent into it. By what has come down to us, holding fast, we reach the finding of the Beloved's breath. For the heart can find its comfort from the Beloved even in the faint scent of a healer. The world is your attributes and you are the Essence; creation is only motes of dust before the sun of your face. Everything is in you and you are in it; you belong to them and they are your mirror. Love disclosed itself from every direction upon my eye, with the light of the divine attributes. For an age I thought love was something other than existence, yet love was the very essence of all that exists. I was part of existence when there was no existence at all; I witnessed, and at that witnessing it said to me: At our appearing, be a poor beggar, a servant, so that through us you may become rich, the one worshipped. And though I circle the House in outward form, within the House there is a subtle meaning, gently circling. The beauty of my Beloved was disclosed to lovers and beloved alike, through transcendence and likeness, through limit and release. His face appears as beauty, His beauty discloses itself as a face, through names and attributes, through rulings and traits of character.

Beauty's decree is the delight of lovers, and by the beloved's charm the whole horizon glows. You, most perfect manifestation of the everlasting Face; you, the channel of grace flowing from the Creator. In you the appearances of all things reach their seal; through you the noblest virtues are made complete. Take knowledge from the mouths of true men with your heart, not with a mind chained by reason. Turn toward them with soul and heart; a self full of arrogance will never be received. Whoever seeks union in love without letting his own self perish, that is impossible. If you resemble the beloved you reach union with him; leave your self on the road, step forward, come. We grew weary of descending and moving on, worn out by settling and setting off again. We were shown a cave to rest in, set upon one of the edges of the mountains. We dug a pit and fell into it, the way rain falls truly into the shells that form pearls. The one Essence appeared clothed in particular forms; from it the shapes of all creation came forth. Its appearance reached perfection only in the being that gathers all things together: the human being. You are the origin and what arose from creation; you are the return, the one who goes back to the Merciful. Through you the Truth looks upon all beings; for this reason He named you the human being. You, the seal upon the text of the Quran's wisdom; you, the tablet holding the verses of the chapter of Discernment. Through you the signs of divine oneness shine; through you the tongues speak the words of the Merciful. In the wilderness of love for the beloved, a people cry out, calling with their call: my God, it is You. What is the wilderness, what the people, what the wanderers? The wilderness is they, and they are nothing but Him.

Look at the pure light and its shadow, and look at the encircling sea and its shadow. All created things appeared from my own being; the world of possibilities became my mirror.

You are a breeze that comes from the land of the beloved, carrying sweet greetings and the scent of affection. You point toward my journey to the valley of my longing, and you incline toward my leaning toward the land I have chosen. It carried its trusts, reached its station, then returned to its source and turned back to come home again. I told it: the way I return to them, my yearning for it is like my yearning for paradise. O breeze, my beloved's threshold surpasses all others in justice, fairness, and wisdom. So carry my greeting from me to them: peace be upon you, a peace both safe and faithful. I am the best of the pure sons of the sea; I will hasten to you like one racing to fulfill a sacred vow. With my soul, my body, my heart, and all of me, I go to the dwelling of my loved ones, my passion, and my longing.