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

The Prophet’s Scribe Becomes an Apostate
202

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Quakes, thunderbolts, and stones all played a role
To show the strength of the prophetic soul.
For men’s sake kill all animals, and then
For intellect’s come back and kill all men!
What’s intellect here? Wisdom’s perfect source,
Not wretched human intellect, of course;
All animals are thus inferior
To Man who is through this superior,
Thus for mankind to take their lives is lawful
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Since beasts lack intellect that’s universal.
Wild men were dealt a massive fall from grace
Because they dared oppose the human race.
What honour will remain for you my friend ––
When you’re
wild, frightened asses
* in the end?
Don’t kill an ass if it’s of bene
fit
But if it’s wild you’re free to slaughter it:
Though ignorance is what the ass might plead
God won’t forgive its failure to take heed.
When someone shuns truth’s breath, don’t say he can
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Be still excused unlike the ass, good man:
It’s lawful to take unbelievers’ lives
Like beasts, with arrows, spears, and hunting knives!
The same goes for their families, you know,
For they lack wisdom and they’re mean and low ––
From truth the ones who turn away and 
flee
Are soon reduced to animality.
The angels Harut and Marut relied on their own immaculateness
and wanted to lead the people of the world, but they fell
into temptation
Harut and Marut, angels up on high,
Pride’s poisoned arrow also caused to die,
Because they had become self-satis
fied:
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Two beasts de
fied a lion and then died––
The Prophet’s Scribe Becomes an Apostate
203

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Even if they had used their horns with skill,
He would have ripped them up in pieces still,
With horns all over, just like porcupines,
He would have killed them, still unharmed by spines.
Although strong winds uproot the tallest trees,
They beautify moist grass just like a breeze;
That 
fierce wind pities weak grass mercifully––
Don’t show o
ff all your strength conceitedly!
An axe does not fear branches of the tree
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But chops them up in bits quite easily;
Still at a 
flimsy leaf it never swings––
The axe’s blade chops only solid things.
Do
flames care that the firewood’s layered so deep?
Do butchers ever run away from sheep?
What’s form next to Reality? So small!
What makes the heavens hang above us all?
In water-wheels the answer can be found ––
What is the force that makes them spin around?
Your shield-like bodies’ motions all begin
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Deep in the hidden spirit that’s within;
The motion of the wind when it should blow
Is like this wheel moved by the water’s
flow:
Where is each breath, each ebb and 
flow, then from?
Straight from the soul full of desire they’ve come;
It makes the letters: J, I, H, A, D.
Now it makes peace, then war and enmity;
It drags things right, then pulls them left in tow,
Now rose bushes, then thorns, are made to grow.
In this way wind was once transformed by God
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Into a dragon to confront the Aad,
Then for believers wind was forced to be
Their peace, protection, and security.
‘
Reality is God,’ said one who knew,
‘
Lord of the worlds, sea of all meaning too.’
All levels up in heaven and on earth
Are
flotsam on the sea––they have no worth;
The twigs there dance and jiggle with the tide
Whenever there is turbulence inside,