Better That One Like Me Never Reaches the Beloved

Better that someone like me never reaches union with the beloved, so he can blame his own weakness on the beloved's perfection. Again and again I grow jealous of the pupil of my own eye: how dare this bold eye keep gazing on the beloved's beauty? What is a moth, that it should cling to the candle? the splendor of the beloved's glory would burn it up at once. My friend, spend your days of pleasure in fasting; perhaps the Night of Power, union with the beloved, will fall your way. Stay far from the cravings of the self, for it is not possible to find room for the beloved in the narrow space of an enemy's company. If the beloved asks for my life and my head, I stand ready; this much, at least, true friends will bear for the beloved. Happy is the body that gives up its life in loyalty to the beloved; fortune belongs to the head that is trampled beneath the beloved's feet. If I have any complaint against you, it is meant for you alone; one cannot speak of the beloved's affairs before enemies. Saadi has shut his eyes to the whole world, so that the whole world now appears to him as the image of the beloved.