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

Am I not your lord?’
* we hear
And essences and accidents appear,
Though all don’t cry out ‘
Yes! ’ still their emergence
Is like a ‘
Yes! ’ sprung forth from non-existence.
I said that stone and wood can understand,
This tale will illustrate this, and expand:
The Old Harpist
130

---

The complaint of the moaning pillar when a pulpit was made for the
Prophet because the congregation had grown and they had said, ‘We
can’t see your blest face when you’re preaching.’ The Prophet and
his companions hear the pillar’s complaint, and the Prophet
converses with it plainly
A pillar, cut o
ff from the Prophet, moaned,
Just like a living being, and it groaned;
He asked it, ‘What are you reacting to?’
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‘My soul bleeds now that it’s cut o
ff from you:
I was your 
firm support, but you’ve moved on––
Do pulpits have a post to lean upon?’
‘Do you want to be made a palm instead,
So everyone can pick your dates?’ he said,
‘Or that God should make you a cypress tree,
So you’ll stay fresh and moist eternally?’
The pillar said, ‘I want what lasts forever’ ––
Don’t you behave worse than this piece of timber!
He buried then that pillar so it may
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Be resurrected on the Final Day.
Those men whom God has called, as you should know,
Involvement with this world choose to forgo:
Whoever gets work straight from God will 
find
Admission there, and leave his job behind,
But those who’ve not had gifts from realms unknown
Will not believe inanimates can moan:
He says, ‘Yes!’ though inside he sco
ffs at it,
So you won’t say that he’s a hypocrite;
Unless informed about His order, ‘
Be! ’
*
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They would reject my discourse totally;
A thousand men who just obey what’s told
Were 
filled with doubt when one new thought took hold,
Their skills in logic, proofs, and imitation
Are based upon their false imagination.
The Old Harpist
131

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That wretched Satan sows doubt in each mind,
In order to trip up the ones who’re blind;
The legs of theorists are made of wood;
A wooden leg’s unstable, it’s no good.
The Pole of each age
* is a visionary––
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Mountains feel dizzy at his constancy,
While blind men need a stick to walk around,
To stop them tumbling over on the ground,
That horseman through whom armies won their 
fight––
Who is this man? The one who has true sight;
Though with a stick the blind can walk with ease,
Seeing through help received from visionaries,
If there were no kings of the mystic kind,
As sti
ff as corpses you would see the blind:
Sowing and reaping blind men cannot do,
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Nor trade, nor building, as is plain to you.
If He had not shown mercy to your heart
Your sta
ff of reason would have split apart––
What is this sta
ff? Proofs and analogies.
Who gave it? That Most Glorious One who sees;
The sta
ff’s become a weapon for your hate,
So break it into bits, you blind ingrate!
He gave this sta
ff that you might benefit,
In anger has He struck you once with it?
Blind people, what’s kept you preoccupied?
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Look for an intermediary, a guide!
Don’t disobey! He gave the sta
ff to you!
Remember just what Adam was put through!
The miracles of Moses and Mohammad
*:
A stick became a snake, a pillar muttered,
The pillar moaned, the stick turned to a snake:
They strike 
five times a day* for their faith’s sake.
But if this truth were comprehensible
We wouldn’t need a single miracle ––
That which is grasped by your intelligence
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Does not need miracles as evidence.