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

Those who’ve seen me are best,
But people who’ve seen them are just as blest.’
When lamps re
flect a candle, men of course
See it as well and know what is the source,
A hundred times like this though it is passed
The source stays linked to those who see it last ––
Either be nourished by the 
final flame
Or the soul’s candle, for they’re all the same,
Either receive light from contemporaries
1960
Or from the candles of past visionaries.
In explanation of the hadith: ‘Your Lord sends in the days of your
era special breaths, so make sure to receive them!’
The Prophet said, ‘The breaths that God exhales
In our own present time that’s what prevails,
So always be attentive with your ears
To catch a breath before it disappears.’
A breath came, saw you, slowly travelled on,
Gave life to whom it wanted, then was gone,
Another breath will come soon, be prepared
So you don’t miss this other one He’s spared;
The mother of all 
fires this breath extinguished,
1965
A dead man inner motion thus distinguished:
The
flame’s heart felt the loss of its existence,
The dead then wore new garments of subsistence,
Like movements of the Prophet’s heavenly tree,
*
Not like those of this world’s menagerie;
If it should fall upon the earth and sky
Then it would terrify all passers by,
From fear of breath like this that’s in
finite––
Recite: ‘
But they refused to shoulder it! ’
Why should ‘
they shrank from it’
* be mentioned here
1970
Unless the mountain turns to blood through fear?
Last night I found You in a di
fferent hue,
But then some morsels blocked the path to You,
The Old Harpist
121

---

For just a bite Loqman is held at bay,
*
It’s now Loqman’s time –– morsel go away!
The morsel’s what these pricks are set upon:
In Loqman’s sole they’re looking for a thorn ––
There’s none at all, nor semblance of one, there:
Your greed stops you discerning things with care!
The thorn’s what you mistook to be a date
1975
Because you’re blind with lust, you low ingrate!
God’s rosary is in Loqman’s pure soul,
How can a thorn have pierced this sage’s sole?
This thorn-consuming realm’s a dromedary
That’s ridden by Mohammad’s progeny ––
Camel, you’re bearing roses, you should know
That from their scent more roses soon will grow!
But you prefer to head for thorns and sand ––
What roses will you 
find on barren land?
You who in search have travelled here and there
1980
For roses, why do you keep asking ‘where?’
From your own foot until you 
first remove
The thorn, you’re in the dark and you can’t move.
A man so great the world can’t hold his size
A thorn’s tip still can blinker from our eyes.
The Prophet came to bring us harmony:
‘
Please speak, sweet redhead,
* come and speak to me,
And throw a horseshoe in the 
fire as well*
So mountains turn to rubies by its spell!’
The redhead’s feminine, it’s Aisha’s name,
1985
Arabs make ‘soul’ in gender just the same,
It makes no di
fference if it’s feminine:
The soul is genderless, alone within,
It’s too sublime for either gender’s hold
For it’s not something which blows hot and cold;
The soul does not grow large by eating bread,
Nor turn like this and then like that instead,
Since it’s pure goodness, it does what is good.
Without it there’s no goodness –– understood?
The Old Harpist
122

---

If it’s through sugar that you taste sweet too,
1990
Remember sugar may abandon you,
But when you turn to sugar through your state
Then how can sugar ever separate!
When lovers 
find within themselves the wine
They lose their intellect, dear friend of mine;
This intellect denies love, but would claim
It’s privy to love’s secrets all the same ––
It’s just a know-all, 
fighting self-negation,
Angels are devils till annihilation,
It seems a friend by what it does and says
1995
But it is far apart from mystic ways ––
It’s nothing, for it won’t leave self-existence,
Unwilling, it’s dissolved by our insistence.
The soul is perfect and so is its call,
Mohammad said, ‘