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

All perishes
* except His face, submit,
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Don’t claim existence –– you’ve no part of it!
To whomsoever in My face should die
The rule 
All perishes does not apply:
‘
There is no’ for ‘except’ he’s left aside,
*
Whoever’s in ‘
except’s’ realm has not died,
And those who talk near him of ‘I’ and ‘we’
Are not let in, thus drowned in vanity.
The Lion, the Wolf, and the Fox
187

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Story about the person who knocked on the door of his beloved, who
asked him from inside, ‘Who is it?’ He replied ‘It is I!’ She
responded, ‘Since you are you, I won’t open the door: I don’t know
any friend who is “I” –– go away!’
A man knocked on his lover’s door one day,
‘Who is it?’ he heard his beloved say.
He said, ‘It’s me.’ She answered, ‘Leave at once!
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There isn’t room for such raw arrogance.’
Raw meat’s cooked just by separation’s
flame––
What else can cure hypocrisy’s deep shame?
He wandered o
ff in pain as his heart burnt,
In exile from the one for whom he yearned,
Matured before then going back once more
And walking to and fro outside her door.
He tapped the door, now su
ffering nerves inside,
Not to let slip a wrong word how he tried!
His sweetheart then responded, asking who
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Was at the door –– he said, ‘None, love, but you.’
‘Now you are I, please enter in this place
Because for two I’s here there isn’t space.’
A needle can’t accommodate split thread,
To enter thread must have a single head.
To 
fit a needle thread is suitable,
For camels, needle eyes are much too small!
*
A camel’s being must be cut to size
With scissors of religious exercise ––
For that to work God’s hand is necessary ––
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His ‘
Be! ’
* solves each impossibility.
With His hand everything is possible ––
Fear of Him tames each stubborn animal;
He doesn’t heal just lepers and the blind
But he can raise the dead too you will 
find,
And non-existents, more dead than the dead,
Towards existence by His will are led.
Recite, ‘
He works on something new each day’
*
And never think He idles time away.
The Lion, the Wolf, and the Fox
188

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His least achievement daily is to send
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Three armies, each to a speci
fic end:
One from men’s loins to mothers has to go
So in their wombs they’ll form an embryo;
One from the wombs towards the world outside ––
Thus males and females have been multiplied;
One army’s sent above straight from the earth
So all can see good actions have much worth ––
This talk is endless, so come quickly here
To friends and followers who are sincere!
His sweetheart said, ‘Come in, all of my heart,
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Not like the rose and thorn that are apart.’
Make fewer errors now there’s just one thread ––
If you see two, know there’s just one ahead.
Just like a noose, ‘
Be! ’
* draws you from a distance
And thus brings non-existence to existence,
Although in form the noose may look like two
There’s just one rope and one thing it will do!
With pairs of legs all men must cross the street,
Two scissor-blades together cut one sheet;
Look at this pair of laundry-men, for instance,
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Between them there is obviously a di
fference:
One washed your clothes in water with some soap,
To dry the other hangs them on a rope,
But then the 
first one rinses them again
As though there is a 
fight between these men!
But these two who may seem to be apart
Both act and think as one –– they’re one at heart;
Each prophet and each saint has his own way,
But all lead to the One to whom they pray.
Sleep overcame the audience for a while,
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Water then bore their millstones for a mile ––
This water comes from up beyond the mill,
For your sake it 
flows down here by God’s will,
When you don’t need to have mills any more
It then will 
flow above you as before.