Drink their own blood and take the selfless Way.
The martyrdom of Hallaj
Hallaj was taken to the gallows tree
And cried: “I am the Truth”; they could not see
The meaning of his words and hacked at him,
Tearing his bleeding carcass limb from limb.
Then as his face grew deathly pale he raised
The bleeding stumps of broken arms and glazed
His moon-like face with glittering blood. He said:
“Since it is blood which paints a man’s face red,
I’ve painted mine that no one here may say
‘Hallaj turned pale on that last bloody day’ –
If any saw me pale they’d think that I
Felt fear to face my torturers and die –
My fear’s of less than one hair’s consequence;
Look on my painted face for evidence!
When he must die and sees the gallows near,
The hero’s courage leaves no room for fear –
Since all the world is like a little ‘O’,
Why should I fear whatever it may show?
Who knows the seven-headed dragon’s lair,
And sleeps and eats through summer’s dog-days there,
Sees many games like this – the gallows seems
The least of all his transitory dreams.”*
lines 2299–2314
That sea of faith, Junaid, in Baghdad once
Discoursed with such persuasive eloquence
It seemed the stars bowed down to hear him speak.
This stalwart guide and comfort of the weak
Delighted in his son, a lovely child
Who as his father lectured was beguiled
And murdered by a gang – they tossed his head
In that assembly’s midst and quickly fled.
Junaid looked steadfastly at this cruel sight
And did not weep but said: “What seems tonight
So strange was certain from eternity;
What happens happens from necessity”.’
A bird who fears death
Another bird spoke up: ‘The Way is long,
And I am neither valiant nor strong.
I’m terrified of death; I know that I –
Before the first stage is complete – must die;
I tremble at the thought; when death draws near,
I know I’ll shriek and groan in snivelling fear.
Whoever fights death with his sword will meet
Inevitable, absolute defeat;
His sword and hand lie smashed. Alas! What grief
They grasp who grasp the sword as their belief!’
The hoopoe answers him
The hoopoe said: ‘How feebly you complain!
How long will this worn bag of bones remain?
What are you but a few bones? – and at heart
Each bone is soft and hastens to depart.
Aren’t you aware that life, from birth to death,
Is little more than one precarious breath?
That all who suffer birth must also die,
Their being scattered to the windy sky?
As you are reared to live, so from your birth
lines 2315–33
You’re also rested to one day leave this earth.
The sky is like some huge, inverted bowl
Which sunset fills with blood from pole to pole –
The sun seems then an executioner,
Beheading thousands with his scimitar.
If you are profligate, if you are pure,
You are but water mixed with dust, no more –
A drop of trembling instability,
And can a drop resist the surging sea?
Though in the world you axe a king, you must
In sorrow and despair return to dust.
The phoenix
In India lives a bird that is unique:
The lovely phoenix has a long, hard beak
Pierced with a hundred holes, just like a flute –
It has no mate, its reign is absolute.
Each opening has a different sound; each sound
Means something secret, subtle and profound –
And as these shrill, lamenting notes are heard,
A silence falls on every listening bird;
Even the fish grow still. It was from this
Sad chant a sage learnt music’s artifice.
The phoenix’ life endures a thousand years
And, long before, he knows when death appears;
When death’s sharp pangs assail his tiring heart,
And all signs tell him he must now depart,
He builds a pyre from logs and massy trees
And from its centre sings sad threnodies –
Each plaintive note trills out, from each pierced hole
Comes evidence of his untarnished soul –
Now like a mourner’s ululating cries,
Now with an inward care the cadence dies –
And as he sings of death, death’s bitter grief
Thrills through him and he trembles like a leaf.
Then drawn to him by his heart-piercing calls
lines 2334–55
The birds approach, and savage animals –
They watch, and watching grieve; each in his mind
Determines he will leave the world behind.
Some weep in sympathy and some grow faint;
Some die to hear his passionate complaint.
So death draws near, and as the phoenix sings
He fans the air with his tremendous wings,
A flame darts out and licks across the pyre –
Now wood and phoenix are a raging fire,
Which slowly sinks from that first livid flash
To soft, collapsing charcoal, then to ash:
The pyre’s consumed – and from the ashy bed
A little phoenix pushes up its head.
What other creature can – throughout the earth –
After death takes him, to himself give birth?
If you were given all the phoenix’ years,
Still you would have to die when death appears.
For years he sings in solitary pain
And must companionless, unmated, reign;
No children cheer his age and at his death
His ash is scattered by the wind’s cold breath.
Now understand that none, however sly,
Can slip past death’s sharp claws – we all must die;
None is immortal in the world’s vast length;
This wonder shows no creature has the strength
To keep death’s ruthless vehemence in check –
But we must soften his imperious neck;
Though many tasks will fall to us, this task
Remains the hardest that the Way will ask.
A mourning son
Before his father’s coffin walked a son –
It seemed his tears would never cease to run.
“No day for me is like the day you died;
My wounded soul despairs,” the poor man cried.
A passing sufi said: “And such a day
lines 2356–70
Has never come your wretched father’s way!”
The son knows sorrow, but do not compare
Such grief with all his father has to bear.
You come into the world a helpless child,
And spend your life by foolishness beguiled –
How your heart longs for sovereignty! – alas,
Like wind through outstretched fingers you will pass.
A vice-roy at the point of death
A vice-roy lingered close to death. One said:
“You are in sight of secrets all men dread –
What do you feel?” “There’s nothing I can say,”
The man replied, “except that every day’
I lived was wasted on what’s trivial,
And now I shall be dust �
�� and that is all.”
To seek death is death’s only cure – the leaf
Grows hectic and must fall; our life is brief.
Know we are born to die; the soul moves on;
The heart is pledged and hastens to be gone.
King Solomon, whose seal subdued all lands,
Is dust compounded with the desert sands,
And tyrants whose decrees spelt bloody doom
Decay to nothing in the narrow tomb:
How many sleep beneath the ground! And sleep
Like theirs is bitter, turbulent and deep.
Look hard at death – in our long pilgrimage
The grave itself is but the first grim stage;
How your sweet life would change if you could guess
The taste of death’s unequalled bitterness.
Jesus and the stream
Once Jesus reached a clear stream’s shaded bank –
He scooped up water in his palms and drank;
How sweet that water was! as if it were
lines 2371–88
Some rose-sweet sherbet or an elixir;
One with him filled a jug, and on they went.
When Jesus drank, to his astonishment,
The jug seemed filled with bitterness. “How strange,”
He said, “that water can so quickly change –
They were the same; what can this difference mean?
What tasted sweet is brackish and unclean!”
The jug spoke: “Lord, once I too had a soul
And was a man – but I have been a bowl,
A cruse, a pitcher of crude earthenware,
Remade a thousand times; and all forms share
The bitterness of death – which would remain
Though I were baked a thousand times again;
No water could be sweet which I contain.”
O careless of your fate! From this jug learn,
And from your inattentive folly turn;
O pilgrim, you have lost yourself – before
Death takes you seek the hidden Way once more!
If while you live and breathe you fail to see
The nature of your own reality,
How can you search when dead? The man who lives
And does not strive is lost; his mother gives
Him life but he cannot become a man –
He strays, a self-deluded charlatan.
How many veils obstruct the sufi’s quest,
How long his search till truth is manifest!
The death of Socrates
When Socrates lay close to death, a youth –
Who was his student in the search for truth –
Said: “Master, when we’ve washed the man we knew
And brought your shroud, where should we bury you?”
He said: “If you can find me when I’ve died,
Then bury me wherever you decide –
1 never found myself; I cannot see
How when I’m dead you could discover me.
lines 2389–2402
Throughout my life not one small particle
Had any knowledge of itself at all!”’
A bird complains of his bad luck
Another bird said: ‘Hoopoe, it’s no good.
Things never happen as I’d hoped they would;
I’ve spent my time in misery since birth,
The most unlucky wretch in all the earth –
My heart knows so much torment that it seems
Each atom of my body raves and screams;
My life has trodden out a hopeless way;
God damn me if I’ve had one happy day!
These sorrows lock me in myself – how can
I undertake this journey which you plan?
If I were happy I would gladly start;
What stops me is this sorrow in my heart.
What can I do? Look, I appeal to you –
I’ve told you everything, what can I do?’
The hoopoe answers him
The hoopoe said: ‘How arrogant you are
To think your wretched self so singular!
The disappointments of this world will die
In less time than the blinking of an eye,
And as the earth must pass, pass by the earth –
Don’t even glance at it, know what it’s worth;
What empty foolishness it is to care
For what must one day be dispersed to air.
The man who refused to drink
There was a man advanced along the Way
Who always, to his puzzled friends’
dismay, Refused to drink sweet sherbet. “Why is this?”
lines 2403–16
One asked: “What could explain this prejudice?”
He said: “I see a man who stands on guard
And notes who drinks – his eyes are cold and hard,
And if I drank, the sweetest sherbet would,
I know, act like a poison in my blood.
While he stands here the contents of the bowl
Are liquid fire to sear the drinker’s soul.”
Whatever lasts a moment’s only worth
One barley grain – though it were all the earth;
How can I trust what has no rooted power
And holds existence for a transient hour?
If you achieve your every wish, why boast
Of glory insubstantial as a ghost?
If disappointments darken all your days,
You need not grieve, for nothing worldly stays –
It is your passion for magnificence
That prompts your tears, not fancied indigence.
What is your grief compared with all the pain
God’s martyrs suffered on Kerbelah’s plain?*
In His clear sight the hardships you endure
Show like a treasure, glittering and pure –
Each breath you breathe His kindness reaches you,
And untold love envelops all you do –
But you forget His grace, and negligence
Makes friendship look like meaningless pretence.
lines 2417–35
The king who gave his slave an apple
A good kind-hearted monarch one day gave
A rosy apple to his favourite slave,
Who seemed to eat the fruit with such delight
The laughing king said: “Here, give me a bite!”
The slave returned him half, but when the king
Bit into it it seemed a paltry thing,
Unripe and tart. Frowning he said: “And how
Is what appeared so sweet so bitter now?”
The slave replied: “My lord, you’ve given me
Such proofs of constant generosity,
I could not find it in my grateful heart
To grumble just because one apple’s tart –
I must accept whatever you bestow;
No harm can come to me from you, I know.”
If you meet tribulations here be sure
That wealth will come from all you must endure;
The paths of God are intricate and strange –
What can you do? Accept what will not change!
The wise know every mouthful on this Way
Tastes bitter with their blood. Until that day
When as His guests they break their bread, they must
Consume in suffering each broken crust.
One asked a sufi how he spent his time.
He said: “I’m thirsty, filthy, smeared with grime,
Burnt in this stove men call the world, but I
Shall keep my courage up until I die.”
If in this world you seek for happiness
You are asleep, your search is meaningless –
If you seek happiness you would do well
To think of that thin bridge arched over hell.*
lines 2455–72
The world’s apparent joy cannot compare
With what we seek – it i
sn’t worth a hair;
Here the Self rages like an unquenched fire,
And nothing satisfies the heart’s desire –
Encompass all the earth, you will not find
One happy heart or one contented mind.
A woman who wished to pray for happiness
An old, sad woman talked to Mahna’s sheikh:
“Teach me to pray for joy, for pity’s sake –
I’ve suffered so much that I cannot bear
To think of future grief – give me some prayer
To murmur every day.” The sheikh replied:
“How many years I wandered far and wide
Until I found the fortress that you seek
It is the knee, bend it, accept, be meek;
I found no other way – this remedy,
And only this, will cure your misery.”
One sat before Junaid. “You are God’s prey,”
He said, “yet you are free in every way
Tell me, when does a man know happiness?
When does his heart rejoice? I cannot guess.”
Junaid replied: “That hour he finds the heart.”
Unless we reach our king wç must depart –
With all our courage wasted – into night.
We atoms are amazed, and lack the light
Of the immortal sun; what circumstance,
‘What suffering, could cleanse our ignorance?
An atom looked at from which way you will
Remains unalterably an atom still;
And one who has an atom’s nature shows
That stubborn fact, no matter how he grows.
If he were lost within the blazing sun
He’d stay an atom till his life were done,
And, good or bad, no matter how he strains,
lines 2455–72
A tiny atom is what he remains.
O atom, weaving like a drunk until
You reach the sun – unsettled, never still –
My patience knows that one day you will see,
Beside the sun, your insufficiency.
The bat who wanted to see the sun
One night a bat said: “How is it that I
Have never seen the sun; I wonder why?
I long to lose myself inks pure light;
Instead my wretched life is one long night –
But though I travel with my eyes shut fast
I know I’ll reach that promised blaze at last.”
A seer had overheard and said: “What pride!
A thousand years might bring you to its side;
You are bewildered, lost you could as soon
Attain the sun as could an ant the moon.”
The unpersuaded bat said: “Never mind,
I’ll fly about and see what I can find.”
For years he flew in dismal ignorance,
The Conference of the Birds (Penguin) Page 12