Maghrebi: A Song of Divine Love

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.