about true seekers

 

Wayfarer, know that in the battlefield of pain,

love may come with annihilation.

You whose existence is mingled

with nonexistence,

you whose joys are mingled with grief,

if you don't experience some ups and downs,

how will you ever know relief?

You bravely strike like lightning,

then cover yourself with rubbish

to protect against the shock.

What are you doing?

Rise up like a true seeker.

Set fire to reason

and flare into a mad lover.

If you hesitate over this alchemy,

at least come and take a quick look.

How long will you stay in your head?

Become like me, leave your self.

For once, show foresight

so that in the end you too can become

a dervish and joyfully arrive

at annihilation of the self.

I who am neither myself nor other than myself

have traveled beyond reason, good and evil thoughts.

I've lost my self within myself.

The only cure is the incurable.

When the sun of poverty landed on me,

both worlds twirled together into a single shaft of light.

And when I saw that column of light

I passed on into no self; became

a drop of water and joined the stream.

All that I had won and lost,

I threw away into black waters.

I disappeared, became lost, void.

I became a shadow without a single atom,

a drop of water that had joined the ocean.

Good luck finding that droplet.

Such loss of self is not for all,

but I joined the eternal union

and there are many like me.

Who in the world, from a dust mote to the moon,

wouldn't want to be lost this way?

~ Farid ud-Din Attar  (1120? - 1220?)

English version by Sholeh Wolpé

from The Conferences of the Birds

with thanks to Poetry Chaikhana