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

The Poor Bedouin and his Wife
156

---

Then on the second day, they turned bright red ––
All hope they’d had was now replaced with dread;
The third day, they all turned black in the face,
Saleh’s claims all proved true –– they had no case.
When they became 
filled with the worst despair,
2550
They knelt like birds just landed from the air;
In revelation Gabriel would dictate
With ‘
jathemin ’
* that men must fall prostrate––
Prostrate when you’re taught how to fall this way
And when you’re told to on that dreaded day!
They waited for his wrath’s blows to descend;
It came and wiped them out –– that was their end.
Saleh left his seclusion for that place,
A smoke cloud was the last remaining trace.
He could hear body parts scream mournfully
2555
Though when he looked no mourners could he see:
He heard some moaning from their scattered bones ––
Their souls, instead of tears, shed solid stones;
Saleh screamed, this was more than he could take,
He started mourning for these mourners’ sake:
‘You’ve made me weep for you, community,
You wasted all your lives on vanity!
God told me, “Su
ffer their abuse and give
Advice to them –– they haven’t long to live.”
I said, “Advice gets blocked by cruelty,
2560
Its milk 
flows out with love and purity––
They’ve forced me to endure such awful pains
Advice’s milk has clotted in my veins!”
God said, “My grace and kindness I will send
And place a plaster on your wounds, my friend.”
He made my heart clear as a sunny day,
From my thoughts sweeping your abuse away,
I then returned to counselling again,
Shared parables like sugar with all men:
Fresh milk from sugar in this way I made,
2565
Mixed milk with honey in what I conveyed ––
Those words became like poison in your heart
Since you were 
filled with poison from the start!
The Poor Bedouin and his Wife
157

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Why should I grieve that grief has now been slain?
You stubborn people were my grief and pain!
Who mourns that grief through dying has been stopped,
Or that a painful boil has 
finally popped?’
‘You mourner,’ to himself he turned and said,
‘That corpse does not deserve the prayers you’ve read.
Reciter, don’t you now make a mistake:
2570
Why should I feel bad for the wicked’s sake.’
*
To weeping with his heart he now returned;
An undeserved compassion in him burned.
He shed tears in distress increasingly,
Drops from the sea of generosity.
His intellect asked him, ‘Why weep, you fool?
Or mourn those who preferred to ridicule?
What are you crying for? Their deeds? Tell me!
For that malicious, wicked company?
For their dark, rusty hearts, your heart now breaks?
2575
Their tongues were venomous just like a snake’s!
Or for their dog-breath do you breathe such sighs,
Or for their scorpion’s nest of mouths and eyes?
Or for their squabbling, sneering and abuse?
Give thanks that God will never let them loose!
Their hands and feet and eyes were out of place,
Their love and peace and anger a disgrace;
To follow the traditions of their sect
They stamped upon the guiding intellect:
They’ve turned to donkeys, they don’t want a guide,
2580
They choose to show o
ff and to worship pride;
From heaven God brought down his slaves to see
How they’re prepared for hell so perfectly!’
Concerning the meaning of ‘He lets the seas meet each other with a
gap which they don’t encroach upon’
*
The source of hell and heaven’s guests is one,
Though there’s