A heart, a soul, a body,
subsist on four things:

the water, the garden,
the wine, the pretty face.

Abu Nuwas

اربعة يحيا بها
قبل و روح و بدن

الماء و البستان و ال
خمرة و الوجه الحسن

ابو نواس

I see the glass is true & see naught
in any else, but a fellow drunk's;

the axis Pleasure’s grinding-stone
once turned upon ages ago.

Abu Nuwas

ارى للكأس حقا لا اراه
لغير الكأس الا للنديم

هي القطب الذي دارت عليه
رحى الذات في الزمن القديم

ابو نواس

Mawqif of Station

He stopped me on my way & said to me:

"I know your station’s stopped before me now; I told you to come in, so come in. And when my Absence overwhelms you, come in."

"There’s no question of your station. It’s the house acquainting you with brethren of the heaven & the earth; the place through which they pass & converse with you."

He said "stop before me," so I stopped, but he, seeing how I sought him, didn’t act.

He said "I seek to act & for you to see me act: your station's in this vision, whereby you see ME act, like you see no one else. This place is the door to that place; this -- the place of your feebleness & that-- the place of your sustenance."

al Niffari

Mawqif of the Path of Knowledge

He stopped me on my way & said to me:

"The path of knowledge doesn't bring me to you out of some hiding place or hidden hiding thing; it's that which hidden place & hiding hidden won’t acquaint you with. You know me by my attribute that has no adjective; a breath to you, who crave nothing in its place; a thing you learn, & nothing after gain."

al Niffari

To a suicide's room

Did you always feel aired out?
A bleated, empty O; pathetic

parenthetic, the walls ringing
for that which they’re without; was it

always so? Or does this open seeming
space stammer with your loss --

ocean breadth in which
the act's carried out, & out ?