selected poem 6-14

6.

Flowers every night
Blossom in the sky;
Peace in the Infinite;
At peace am I.

Sighs a hundredfold
From my heart arise;
My heart, dark and cold,
Flames with my sighs.


7.

He that is my souls' repose
Round my heart encircling goes,
Round my heart and soul of bliss
He encircling is.

Laughing from my earthy bed
Like a tree I lift my head,
For the Fount of Living mirth
Washes round my earth.


8.

The breeze of the morn
Scatters musk in its train,
Fragrance borne
From my fair love's lane.

Ere the world wastes,
Sleep no more: arise!
The caravan hastes,
The sweet scent dies.


9.

If life be gone, fresh life to you
God offereth,
A life eternal to renew
This life of death.

The Fount of Immorality
In Love is found;
The come, and in this boundless sea
Of Love be drowned.


10.

Happy was I
In the pearl's heart to lie;
Till, lashed by life's hurricane,
Life a tossed wave I ran.

The secret of the sea
I uttered thunderously;
Like a spent cloud on the shore
I slept, and stirred no more.


11.

He set the world aflame,
And laid me on the same;
A hundred tongues of fire
Lapped round my pyre.

And when the blazing tide
Engulfed me, and I sighed,
Upon my mouth in haste
His hand He placed.


12.

Though every way I try
His whim to satisfy,
His every answering word
Is a pointed sword.

See how the blood drips
From His finger-tips;
Why does He find it good
To wash in my blood?


13.

Remembering Thy lip,
The ruby red I kiss;
Having not that to sip,
My lips press this.

Not to Thy far sky
Reaches my stretched hand,
Wherefore kneeling, I
Embrace the land.


14.

I sought a soul in the sea
And found a coral there;
Beneath the foam for me
An ocean was all laid bare.

Into my heart's night
Along a narrow way
I groped; and lo! the light,
An infinite land of day.

'Persian Poems', an Anthology of verse translations edited
by A.J.Arberry, Everyman's Library, 1972