“What is important is to keep our mind high in the world of true understanding, and, returning to the world of our daily experience, to seek therein the truth of beauty. No matter what we may be doing at a given moment, we must not forget that it has a bearing upon our everlasting self…
Whoever tastes the flavour of our drink…
A well-known and oft-quoted Sufi classic by the 14th C Egyptian poet, Ibn bint Mayliq Whoever tastes the flavour of the drink of the people knows it and whoever becomes aware of it tomorrow [the Day of Resurrecton] will give his soul for it Even if he risked his spirits, and sacrificed them with every blink of the…
The cicada: Camaron and Basho
A cicada shell; it sang itself utterly away. In the cicada’s cry There’s no sign that can foretell How soon it must die. stillness— sinking into the rocks, cicadas’ cry —Barnhill, Bashō’s Haiku, 94, #392 -Basho Camaron Translation: Don’t sing cicada silence your chirping, For I carry a pain in my soul, A…
Hidden Love, Apparent tears
An anonymous gem from Andalusia Translation Passion is hidden, while my tears reveal it it is dying while my love revives it My slender torturer all beauties have been combined in her As if, in her beauty, she were Joseph’s face and as if, in my sadness, I were like his father O, you who burns…