Translation: Torture me as you will, but don’t stay away from me, and you will find me the most faithful of lovers, delighting in whatever pleases thee Who will take pity on me, and destroy my soul in love for this gazelle who, within every soul, are mingled her sweet qualities Whoever dies of love…
Tonight I learned that you would come
Another poem of Amir Khusrow: Translation: Tonight I heard that you, oh beloved, would come – Be my head sacrificed to the road along which you will come riding! All the gazelles of the desert have put their heads on their hands In the hope that one day you will come to hunt them…. The…
The River of Love
One of the most popular and beautiful verses of the wonderful Amir Khusrau… Khusrau darya prem ka, ulti wa ki dhaar, Jo utra so doob gaya, jo dooba so paar. Oh Khusrau, the river of love Runs in strange ways. One who enters it drowns, And one who drowns, gets across. it is popularly performed alongside…
Where was I Last Night?
Translation: I don’t know what place it was, where I was last night, The dance of death whirled all around me, where I was last night A nymph-like beauty with tulip cheeks and a cypress body was wreaking havoc in the hearts, where I was last night God himself was the master of ceremonies, in that placeless…
I have found my love
Another gem from Amīr Khusrow, about his Shaykh Niẓamuddīn Awliyā’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWq-qgMDz14 Translation: What a glow I see everywhere , Oh mother, what a glow;I’ve found the beloved, yes I found him,In my courtyard;I have found my pīr Nizamuddin Aulia.I roamed around the whole world,looking for the perfect beloved;And finally this face has enchanted my heart.The whole…
Hafez and Basho
Basho A strange flower for birds and butterfliesthe autumn sky Glorious the moon . . . therefore our thanks dark clouds Come to rest our necks The first day of the year: thoughts come – and there is loneliness; the autumn dusk is here. None is travelling Here along this way but I,…
Basho on poetry
“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…