We were letters -- lofty & unlipped, set
atop the apex's highest alp, where

I was you & we was you, you he & All
in he he; ask any who once passed through.

Ibn Arabi


كُنَّا حُروفاً عالياتٍ لمْ نُقلْ
مُتعلِّقاتٍ في ذُرَى أعلى القُلَلْ

أَنَا أَنْتَ فيهِ وَنَحنُ أَنْتَ وأَنْتَ هُوْ
والكلُّ في هو هُوْ فَسلْ عَمَّنْ وَصَلْ

ابن عربي

From your love, Layla

for M.H.

From your love, Layla, my name is known; so all
can tell the sake for which I suffer now;

& for what rabid, violent love I bend, when any,
from one pang of want, would bow.

What is she to a glance, but grief; a flicker
spurring a fire's dying breath to glow.

O Layla, you don’t smite with repulsion or disdain;
since sympathy & mercy's all you vow;

for you (O God) I’m follower & phile,
eaten up by love that doesn't show:

terrified a traitor, or a tattler, or a coveter, break
a word of what the people don’t already know.

Qays ibn al-Mulawwah
from Majnun and Layla

______

بحبك يا ليلى قد اصبحت شهرة

و كل بما القاه عندك يفهم

صريع من الحب المبرح و الجوى

و اي فتى من لوعة البين يسلم

و ما هي الا حسرة بعد نظرة

اثارت لهيبا في الحشاشة يضرم

فلا تقتليني بالصدود و بالقلى

و مثلك يا ليلى يرق و يرحم

فولله اني فيك عان و عاشق

اذوب غراما فيك و الحب اكتم

مخافة واش او رقيب و حاسد

يحدث ما لا كانت الناس تعلم

قيس بن الملوح

من ديوان مجنون و ليلى

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