Who Has Bid Thee Ask No More?
English translation by Gertrude Lowthian Bell
Beloved, who has bid thee ask no more
How fares my life? to play the enemy
And ask not where he dwells that was thy friend?
Thou art the breath of mercy passing o*er
The whole wide world, and the offender I;
Ah, let the rift my tears have channelled end,
Question the past no more!
If thou would‘st know the secret of Love’s fire.
It shall be manifest unto thine eyes:
Question the torch flame burning steadfastly,
But ask no more the sweet wind’s wayward choir.
Ask me of faith and love that never dies;
Darius, Alexander’s sovereignty,
I sing of these no more.
Ask not the monk to give thee Truth’s pure gold.
He hides no riches ’neath his lying guise;
And ask not him to teach thee alchemy
Whose treasure-house is bare, his hearth-stone cold.
Ask to what goal the wandering dervish hies,
They knew not his desire who counselled thee;
Question his rags no more!
And in their learned books thou ’lt seek in vain
The key to Love’s locked gateway; Heart grown wise
In pain and sorrow, ask no remedy!
But when the time of roses comes again,
Take what it gives, oh Hafiz, ere it flies,
And ask not why the hour has brought it thee,
And wherefore ask no more!
Hafez
My heart holds within it every form,
it contains a pasture for gazelles,
a monastery for Christian monks.
There is a temple for idol-worshippers,
a holy shrine for pilgrims;
there is the table of the Torah,
and the Book of the Koran.
I follow the religion of Love
and go whichever way His camel leads me.
This is the true faith;
this is the true religion.
~
Ibn Arabi
Bir kez gönül yıktın ise bu kıldığın namaz değil. Yetmiş iki millet dahi elin yüzün yumaz değil.
Yol odur ki doğru vara, göz odur ki Hakk’ı göre, er odur ki alçak dura, yüceden bakan göz değil.
Doğru yola gittin ise, er eteğin tuttun ise, bir hayır da ettin ise, birine bindir, az değil.
Yunus bu sözleri çatar, sanki balı yağa katar. Halka satışını satar, yükü gevherdir, tuz değil.
If you have broken a heart once, this prayer you offer is no prayer. The seventy-two nations together cannot wash your hands and face.
The road is what goes straight. The eye is what sees the Real. The man is what stoops low. Not the eye that looks down from above.
If you have walked the straight road, if you have held the master’s hem, if you have done one good thing, count it a thousand. It is not small.
Yunus knots these words together, as if mixing honey into oil. He hawks his goods before the people: the cargo is jewels, not salt.
~Yunus Emre
This poem was written by a Texas Sufi; mutual friend (Reggie Whitehead aka Habiballah) of myself and rookie54
Chandor's Gardens
With a trowel and such implements
as genius and love, he laid each seed
deep in the moist warm heart of providence.
On Sundays, now, we stroll these paths and read
his epitaph in sunny marigold,
wisteria, and phlox. The careful hand
that set this cutting, trained that vine, is cold,
will not respond to sun and will withstand
the urging of the most tumultuous Spring.
He could not stay to see them come to bloom.
But may that mind that knew such flowering
lived in a seed, discover that the tomb
is but a spore in some diviner air,
and may he forever bloom and flourish there!
rw
Note: Douglas Chandor (1897-1953) was a famous British- born portrait painter who painted the likes of Winston Churchhill, Queen Elizabeth the second, Eleanor Roosevelt, and many more.
He married a lady from Weatherford, Texas where he built a home and studio and where he established the gardens that now bear his name.
Bare feet
That have walked miles –
Across the frontiers, beyond the black waters.
Bare feet
That have trodden
The slushy roads of Manhattan
When the eyes visualized a celestial Mahabharata
In the skies – which became the canvas.
Bare feet
That have marched
On the scorching tar of the roads of Madras
While the right finger
Pressed the shutter
And captured
The leper
Dwarfed by the big breasts of the nautch girl.
Bare feet
That have sunk deep
Into the soft sand of Rajasthan
While Airavata descended from the skies
And a gallant Rajput galloped away with a Moghul beauty
In the mind’s eye.
Bare feet
That landed
On the seashore of Kerala
As the sun played naughty games
With the glistening bronze bosoms
And under the erect coconut trees
Women endlessly combed their long tresses.
The frenzied hand moved faster,
The beard grew longer,
The hair silvern,
The dress white,
The mane unruly,
The glasses quainter,
And on the gleaming canvas
Bodies lost shape amidst rough, stark lines.
Bare feet
That refused to walk
Into the muddy cesspool
Where wind didn’t remain wind
But came unannounced with a senseless fury
To wipe out towns, erase names, snuff out villages, raze crops
And the hands couldn’t paint –
The canvas was bare –
Speaking more angrily through that silence.
Bare feet
That climbed never-ending steps
To the beat of conch shells
And the ghant-naad of Varanasi.
The brush-strokes caught
The reflection of twilight
Of women washing down their sins
Of floating diyaas looking like fireflies
Of the flight of crows.
Bare feet
That twitched at the thought of a mother never seen
Because like a Reverend Mother she had refused to get herself photographed.
Bare feet
That relaxed
And felt at home
As tears rolled down that face, sculpted by wind,
When a white sari with a blue border
Wiped tear after tear
And more tears kept emerging.
Bare feet
Covered by a gigantic canopy – the sky –
When it rained needlessly.
And water overflowed from open gutters.
The hands etched a homage to the common man
And
That tattered piece of black cloth
Breathed life.
Bare feet
That thumped the ground
To the beat of different ragas
And as the aalaap turned into jhala
The strokes became more rhythmic
And the ragamala was resurrected.
Bare feet
That were put on a stool
And the mind wandered afar
Into the mystic world of Sufi thought
And the fingers scratched rough marks from nowhere
And Sufi characters pointed skywards
Looking like the fingers that gave them shape.
Bare feet
That dance merrily
As horses trot, canter and gallop
On the beach of his mind
Trrp trrp trrp trrp Tabdak Tabdak tabdak trrp trrp trrp
And a cavalcade of equus, steeds, ponies, chargers, thoroughbreds, fillies,
and colts
Prance, prowl, race and spur on and on and on and onandonandonandon……..
* * * *
The walls are white
The hands play with the child.
The beard rests on the chest
The mane hides the ears.
The eyes are moist with memories.
The hand sketches on
Fragments of life.
The body is straight,
Unbent.
But at the slightest touch of wind, the mane leaps. He gets up,
Looking like a fluttering flag.
The feet – not bare – in slippers –
Rest.
But only for the moment.
Wait for sundown
Wait for twilight
Wait for the dark night to plant new thoughts
In tempestuous dreams……..
And as the first ray of sunlight
Cracks the city enveloped by Durga’s hair
And makes a hole through the curtains,
The bare feet
will rise once again
And gallop away
Like horses.
Because the tale is still unfinished.
Salil Tripathi (1982)
It was a simple picture that grabbed my attention.
It was a rock
split open
Through the crack
rose
a beautiful flower,
blossoming.
It is a picture I saved
returning again
and again
to sit with it.
I don’t know what it was
but it haunted me.
Maybe it is
the resilience of life.
So this flower is inside us
We are the rock
We are the splitting
We are the flower blossoming through
It is all us
It is in us
It is from us
What if we came to see the rock
as our own heart?
A heart that was once
so hard
Perhaps it broke
Perhaps it broke open
And what was once just a crack
Became an opening
Yes, there is a crack
in everything
in everyone
in every stone
in every heart
that’s how the light gets in
As Leonard told us
As Rumi told us
But there is more:
The light gets in
And the flower gets out
Sometimes the rock itself
softens
becomes the soil
the flower is rooted in
Even if your heart was once
hard
as a rock
May a thousand flowers
blossom through its cracks
Blessed be these cracks
stones turning into soft soil
~Omid Safi
There is a brokenness out of which comes the unbroken,
a shatteredness out of which blooms the unshatterable.
There is a sorrow beyond all grief which leads to joy and a fragility out of whose depths emerges strength.
There is a hollow space too vast for words through which we pass with each loss, out of whose darkness we are sanctified into being.
There is a cry deeper than all sound whose serrated edges cut the heart as we break open to the place inside which is unbreakable and whole, while learning to sing.
Rashani Rea
"Listen, Oh drop, give yourself up without regret,
And in exchange gain the Ocean.
Listen, oh drop, bestow upon yourself this honor,
And in the arms of the Sea be secure
Who indeed should be so fortunate?
An Ocean wooing a drop!
In God’s name, in God’s name, sell and buy at once!
Give a drop, and take this Sea full of pearls."
~Rumi
I sought a remedy for my pain; my pain itself, it was the remedy.
I sought a proof of my origin; my origin itself, it was the proof.
I kept looking to my right and my left, hoping to see the face of the Friend.
I was searching far outside, and He was the soul within the soul.
I once imagined separation: the Friend is other, and I am other.
The One who sees and hears through me,
I came to know, was the Beloved.
Niyazi-i Misri (d. 1694), Divan-i Ilahiyyat
