The Masnavi, Book One (Oxford World's Classics)

The Jewish Vizier who Misled Christians
34

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Your heart and soul can’t take the heat at all,
No ears to hear these truths, whom shall I call?
He changes every ear into an eye
And every stone into a gem you’d buy,
Compared with this what then is alchemy!
520
Next to His miracles what’s sorcery!
My uttering praise is really ceasing praise,
It proves my being –– what I must erase!
Before His being please leave yours behind!
What is our own existence, blue and blind:
Except the blind, all melt before his feet
The moment that the sun emits its heat,
And if from mourning it has not turned blue
*
How come it’s freezing standing next to you!
How the vizier lost his way in his plot
The king’s vizier, like him a heedless fool,
525
Sought to contest divine eternal rule,
To punch Almighty God, who out of naught,
In moments, worlds like ours to life has brought!
A hundred worlds in seconds He’ll display
When your own eyes, through Him, can look this way;
To you this world seems vast and limitless,
To Him compared with atoms it’s worth less.
This world’s a gaol, your souls are locked inside,
Head that way for the open countryside!
This world has limits, that one’s limit-free,
530
Form is a barrier to reality:
The thousand spears of Pharaoh Moses knew,
With just one rod how to split them in two;
Medical sciences once Galen taught
But next to Jesus’s breath
* they’re worth naught;
The
finest poetry was put to shame
The day illiterate Mohammad came ––
The Jewish Vizier who Misled Christians
35

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With such an overwhelming lord, how then
Can you not die unless you’re wretched men!
Men’s hearts like Sinai fall drunk at His words,
535
He hangs up by their claws such clever birds ––
To hone the intellect is not the way,
The destitute alone the king will pay!
Truth’s treasure-hunters with their stores of gold
The foolish thought were donkeys they could scold:
How can a donkey be compared with you,
As if you have a tail and four legs too!
Sins made a woman’s olive face turn white,
But God made her like Venus shining bright:
*
This change in her was a great transformation,
540
While turning back to clay is degradation!
Your spirit urged you to the highest sphere,
You’ve turned to clay instead by falling here,
Transformed yourself by sinking from above
From an existence that great men would love;
The value of this change of course below
Compared with her change is extremely low:
You urged ambition’s steed towards the sun
But then snubbed Adam, the most honoured one,
*
Despite the fact you’re Adam’s progeny ––
545
How long will you think baseness majesty!
‘I’ll rule a world,’ how long will you declare,
‘And let my massive ego 
fill the air!’
The world each year gets covered up with snow
Until it’s melted by the sun’s warm glow:
His sins, like those of any sly vizier,
With just one spark from God soon disappear;
To wisdom God can turn what idiots think
And poisoned water to a wholesome drink!
The cause of doubts He turns to certainty,
550
To love He changes spite and enmity,
Like saving Abraham from 
flames that roar*
He’ll change fear to security once more;
He burnt all logic, leaving me ecstatic,
While idle fancies just made you a sceptic!
The Jewish Vizier who Misled Christians
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