Till he collapsed in an exhausted trance
And murmured as he tried in vain to fly:
“Where is the sun? Perhaps I’ve passed it by?”
The seer was there and said: “You’ve managed one
Short step, and yet you think you’ve passed the sun;
You live in dreams!” Shame crushed the bat; he felt
The last thin remnants of his courage melt.
Humble and wretched, he sought out the Way–
“He understands,” he said, “I will obey”.’
A bird accepts the hoopoe’s leadership
Another bird said: ‘Hoopoe, you’re our guide.
How would it be if I let you decide?
I’m ignorant of right and wrong – I’ll wait
lines 2473–89
For any orders that you stipulate.
Whatever you command I’ll gladly do,
Delighted to submit myself to you.’
‘Bravo!’ the hoopoe cried. ‘By far the best
Decision is the one that you suggest;
Whoever will be guided finds relief
From Fate’s adversity, from inward grief;
One hour of guidance benefits you more
Than all your mortal life, however pure.
Those who will not submit like lost dogs stray,
Beset by misery, and lose their way -.
How much a dog endures! and all in vain;
Without a guide his pain is simply pain.
But one who suffers and is guided gives
His merit to the world; he truly lives.
Take refuge in the orders of your guide,
And like a slave subdue your restive pride.
The king who stopped at the prison gates
A king returned once to his capital.
His subjects had prepared a festival,
And each to show his homage to the crown
Had helped to decorate the glittering town.
The prisoners had no wealth but iron gyves,
Chains, severed heads, racked limbs and ruined lives –
With such horrific ornaments they made
A sight to greet their monarch’s cavalcade.
The king rode through the town and saw the way
His subjects solemnized the happy day,
But nothing stopped the progress of his train
Till he approached the prison and drew rein.
There he dismounted and had each man told
That he was free and would be paid in gold.
A courtier asked the king: “What does this mean?
lines 2490–2508
To think of all the pageantry you’ve seen –
Brocade and satin shining everywhere,
Musk and sweet ambergris to scent the air,
Jewels scattered by the handful on the ground –
And not so much as once did you look round;
Yet here you stop – before the prison gate!
Are severed heads a way to celebrate?
What is there here to give you such delight?
Torn limbs and carcasses? A grisly sight!
And why did you dismount? Should you sit down
With all the thieves and murderers in town?”
The king replied: “The others make a noise
Like rowdy children playing with new toys;
Each takes his part in some festivity,
Careful to please himself as much as me –
They do their duty and are quite content,
But here in prison more than duty’s meant.
My word is law here, and they’ve plainly shown
This spectacle was made for me alone.
I see obedience here; need I explain
Why it is here I’m happy to draw rein?
The others celebrate in pompous pride,
Conceited, giddy and self-satisfied,
But these poor captives sacrifice their will
And bow to my commands through good and ill –
They have no business but to spend each breath
In expectation of the noose and death,
Yet they submit – and to my grateful eyes
Their prison is a flower-strewn paradise.”
Wisdom accepts authority and waits;
The king paused only at the prison gates.
A sufi who surpassed Bayazid and Tarmazi
A master of the Way once said: “Last night
I saw a strange, unprecedented sight –
I dreamt that Bayazid and Tarmazi
lines 2509–30
Were walking, and they both gave way to me –
I was their guide! I sought to understand
How two such sheikhs were under my command,
And then remembered that one distant dawn
A sigh was from my very entrails torn;
That sigh had cleared the Way – a massive gate
Swung open, and I entered the debate
Of sheikhs and dervishes. All questioned me
But Bayazid, who was content to see
That I was there; he uttered no request
But said: ‘I heard the sigh that tore your breast,
And knew I must accept you as you are,
Not seek for this or that particular –
Embrace the soul and disregard the pain,
Or weigh up what is loss and what is gain;
Your wish is my command, for who am I
To question those commands or to reply?
Your faithful slave cannot demur or tire;
I will perform whatever you desire.’
This shows why Bayazid and Tarmazi,
Though they are great, gave precedence to me.”
When once a slave accepts his Lord’s control
And hears Him whisper in his inmost soul
He does not boast, no outward signs are shown,
But when life’s crises come – then he is known.
The death of Sheikh Kherghan
When Sheikh Kherghan lay near to death he cried:
“If men could split my heart and see inside,
They’d tell the world my misery and pain,
A wise man’s secret doctrine would be plain:
Forsake idolatry; if you do this
You are His slave, and cannot go amiss;
All else is pride. If you are neither slave
Nor God you’re substanceless, however brave –
I call you ‘No-one’; turn now, no-one, seek
lines 2531–44
Devotion’s path, be humbled, lowly, meek.
But when you bow the head in slavery,
Be resolute, bow down with dignity:
The king who sees a cringing, stupid slave
Who has no notion how he should behave
Expels him from his court, and Mecca’s shrine
Is closed to louts and fools. If you combine
True servitude with dignity your Lord
Will not deny you your desired reward.”
The slave who was given a splendid robe
A slave was given, from his sovereign’s hand,
A splendid robe – and feeling very grand
He put it on to wander through the town.
By chance, as he paraded up and down,
Some mud splashed in his face, and with his sleeve
He quickly wiped it off: who should perceive
His action but a sneaking sycophant –
The king was told and hanged the miscreant.
From this unhappy story you can see
How kings treat those who have no dignity.’
A bird questions the hoopoe about purity
Another bird spoke next: ‘Dear hoopoe, say
What purity consists of on this Way,
It seems a settled heart’s forbidden me –
All that I gain I lose immediately.
It’s either scattered to the winds or turns
To scorpions in my hands; my being year
ns
For this great quest, I’m bound to nothing here –
I smashed all worldly chains and knew no fear;
With purity of heart, who knows, I might
Behold His face with my unaided sight.’
lines 2545–61
The hoopoe answers him
The hoopoe said: ‘Our Way does not belong
To anyone, but to the pure and strong –
To those who let go every interest
And give themselves entirely to our quest;
All your possessions are not worth a hair.
(Don’t mend what’s torn, what’s sewn together tear!)
Consign them to the fire, and when its flash
Has burnt them, rake together all the ash
And sit on it – then you will know their worth.
But you will curse the day that gave you birth
If you ignore my words. Until your heart
Is free of ownership you cannot start –
Since we must leave this prison and its pains,
Detach yourself from all that it contains;
Will what you own bribe death? Will death delay?
If you would enter on the pilgrim’s Way,
Tie up your grasping hands: all you endure
Is valueless if you set out impure.
A sheikh of Turkestan once said: “Above
All other things there are just two I love.
My swiftly trotting piebald horse is one –
The second is none other than my son
If death should take my son I’d sacrifice
My horse in thanks – I know these two entice,
As idols would, my spirit from the Way.”
Don’t brag of purity until the day
You flare as candles do whose substance turns
To nothing as the flame leaps up and burns;
Whoever boasts a pure, unsullied name
Will find his actions contradict his claim,
When purity gives way to greed, the power
Of retribution strikes within the hour.
lines 2562–80
Sheikh Kherghani and the aubergine
One day Sheikh Kherghani’s devout routine
Was spoilt by cravings for an aubergine.
His mother was unsure what should be done
But hesitantly gave him half a one –
The moment that he bit its flesh a crew
Of ruffians seized his son and ran him through.
That night, outside the sheikh’s front door they laid
His boy’s head hacked off by a cutlass blade.
The sheikh cried out: “How often I’d foreseen
Disaster if I tasted aubergine!”
The man who has been chosen by this Guide
Must follow Him and never swerve aside –
His service is more terrible than war,
Than shame that cringes to a conqueror.
It is not knowledge keeps a man secure –
With all his understanding, fate is sure;
Each moment we receive a different guest,
And each that comes presents another test,
Although a hundred sorrows wring your soul,
The future will not bow to your control.
But one who breaks illusion’s hold will find
Misfortune will not always cloud his mind.
A hundred thousand of His lovers sigh
To sacrifice themselves for Him and die;
How many waste their idle lives until
They bleed and groan, subservient to His will.
A voice speaks to Zulnoon
Zulnoon said: “I was in the desert once.
Trusting in God, I’d brought no sustenance –
I came on forty men ahead of me,
Dressed all in rags, a closed community.
My heart was moved. ‘O God,’ I cried, ‘take heed,
What wretched lives you make your pilgrims lead!’
lines 2581–98
‘We know their life and death,’ a voice replied;
‘We kill these pilgrims first; when they have died
We compensate them for the blood we shed.’
I asked, ‘When will this killing stop?’ He said:
‘When my exchequer has no love* to give,
While I can pay for death they shall not live,
I drink my servant’s blood and he is hurled
In frenzied turbulence about the world –
Then when he is destroyed and cannot find
His head, his feet, his passions or his mind,
I clothe him in the splendour he has won
And grace enfolds him, radiant as the sun:
Though I will have his face bedaubed by blood,
A starved ascetic smeared with dust and mud,
A denizen of shadows and the night –
Yet I will rise before him robed in light,
And when that sun, My countenance, is here
What can these shadows do but disappear?’”
Shadows are swallowed by the sun, and he
Who’s lost in God is from himself set free;
Don’t chatter about loss – be lost Repent,
And give up vain, self-centred argument;
If one can lose the Self, in all the earth
No other being can approach his worth.
I know of no one in the world profound
As Pharaoh’s sorcerers: the wealth they found
Was faith’s true Way, which is to sift apart
The grosser Self from the aspiring heart.
The world’s known nothing of them since that day
They took this first short step along the Way –
And in the world no wisdom could provide
A surer path than this, a better guide!’
lines 2599–2612
A bird who burns with aspiration
‘O hoopoe,’ cried another of the birds,
‘What lofty ardour blazes from your words!
Although I seem despondent, weak and lame,
I burn with aspiration’s noble flame –
And though I’m not obedient I feel
My soul devoured by an insatiate zeal.’
The hoopoe answers him
The hoopoe said: ‘This strange, magnetic force
That holds God’s ancient lovers to their course
Still shows the Truth: if you will but aspire
You will attain to all that you desire.
Before an atom of such need the sun
Seems dim and murky by comparison –
It is life’s strength, the wings by which we fly
Beyond the further reaches of the sky.
The old woman who wanted to buy Joseph
When Joseph was for sale, the marketplace
Teemed with Egyptians wild to see his face;
So many gathered there from dawn to dusk
The asking price was five whole tubs of musk.
An ancient crone pushed forward in her hand
She held a few threads twisted strand by strand;
She brandished them and yelled with all her might:
“Hey, you, the seller of the Canaanite!
I’m mad with longing for this lovely child –
I’ve spun these threads for him, he drives me wild!
You take the threads and I’ll take him away –
Don’t argue now, I haven’t got all day!”
The merchant laughed and said: “Come on, old girl,
It’s not for you to purchase such a pearl
lines 2613–29
His value’s reckoned up in gold and jewels;
He can’t be sold for threads to ancient fools!”
“O, I knew that before,” the old crone said;
“1 knew you wouldn’t sell him for my thread
But it’s enough that everyone will ay
‘She bid for Joseph on that splendid day’.”
The heart that
does not strive can never gain
The endless kingdom’s gates and lives in vain;
It was pure aspiration made a king
Set fire to all he owned to everything
And when his goods had vanished without trace
A thousand kingdoms sprang up in their place.
When noble aspiration seized his mind,
He left the world’s corrupted wealth behind –
Can one who craves the sun be satisfied
With petty ignorance? Is this his guide?
The poverty of Ibrahim Adham
I know of one who whined unceasingly,
Complaining of his abject poverty,
Till Ibrahim Adham said: “Do you weep
Because you bought your poverty too cheap?”
The man replied: “What's that supposed to mean?
To purchase poverty would be obscene.”
He said: “I gave a kingdom up for mine,
But for the earthly realm which I resign
I still receive, each moment that I live,
A hundred worlds: my realm was fugitive –
I said farewell to it, to all the earth,
And put my trust in goods of proven worth.
I know what value is; I praise His name –
And you know neither, to your lasting shame.”
Those who aspire renounce both heart and soul,
Content through years to suffer for their goal;
The bird of aspiration seeks His throne,
Outsoaring faith and all the world, alone:
lines 2630–46
But if you lack this zeal, be off with you –
You’re quite unfit for all we have to do.
Sheikh Ghouri and Prince Sanjar
When Sheikh Ghouri, an adept of the Way,
Took refuge underneath a bridge one day
Together with a group of crazy fools,
Sanjar rode by, resplendent in his jewels,
And said: “Who’s huddled over there?” “O king,”
The sheikh replied, “we haven’t got a thing,
But we’ve decided on a choice for you –
Be good to us, and bid the world adieu,
Or be our enemy, and you will find
It is your faith that you must leave behind.
If you will join us for a moment here,
Your pride and gorgeous pomp will disappear –
Look at our friendship and our enmity
And make your mind up; which is it to be?”
Sanjar replied: “I’m not the man for you.
It’s not your kind my hate and love pursue;
You’re not my enemy, you’re not my friend;
My heart’s directed to a different end.
In front of you I’ve neither pride nor shame
The Conference of the Birds (Penguin) Page 13