Satan Appears

The company of the radiant of heart is for a breath or two, that breath or two is the substance of being and not-being;

It made love more tumultuous, and then passed, endowed reason with vision, and then passed.

I closed my eyes to hold it still within me, to transport it from my eyes to my heart.

Suddenly I saw the world had become dark, become dark from space even to spacelessness.

In that night a flame appeared from the midst of which an old man leaped forth

Wrapped in a cloak of antimony grey, his body immersed in wreathing smoke.

Rumi said, ‘The Leader of the People of Separation! How all a-fire, and what a cup of blood!

Ancient, seldom smiling, of few words, his eyes scanning the soul within the body,

Drunkard and mullah, philosopher and Sufi, in practice like a toiling ascetic,

His nature alien to the joy of union, his asceticism the abandonment of eternal beauty;

Since it was not easy to break away from beauty, he made a beginning with spurning adoration.

Gaze a little at his visitations, gaze at his difficulties, his tenacity

Still absorbed in the battle of good and evil, he has seen a hundred prophets, and is an infidel yet.’

My soul in my body quivered for his agony; a sigh of anguish broke from his lips.

With eyes half-closed he turned to me and said; ‘Who besides me has so gloried in action?

I have become so involved in labour that even on the Sabbath I am rarely at rest;

I have no angels, no servants attending me; my revelation is without benefit of prophets.

I have brought neither Traditions nor Book; I have robbed theologians of their sweet soul.

None ever spun finer than they the thread of religion. yet in the end they left the Kaaba a heap of bricks.

My religion has no such foundation; in the faith of Iblis there are no schisms and sects.

Ignorant one, I have given up prostration, I have turned the organ of good and evil.

Do not take me for one who denies God’s existence; open your eyes on my inner self, overlook my exterior.

If I say, "He is not", that would be foolishness, for when one has seen, one cannot say, "He is not".

Under the veil of "No" I murmured "Yes"; what I have spoken is better than what I never said.

To share in the pain and suffering of Adam I did not forgo the fury of the Beloved.

Flames sprang forth from my sown field; man out of predestination achieved free-will.

I displayed my own hideousness and have given you the joy of leaving or choosing.

Deliver me now from my fire; resolve, O man, the knot of my toil.

You who have fallen into my noose and given to Satan the leave to disobey;

Live in the world with true manly zeal; as you pity me, live a stranger to me

Proudly disregarding my sting and my honey, so that my scroll may not become blacker still.

In the world the huntsman lives on his prey; whilst you are my prey, I draw out my arrows.

He who soars aloft is secure from falling: if the quarry is cunning, the huntsman will fail.’

‘Give up this cult of separation’, I said to him ‘The most hateful of things to God is divorce.’

He said, ‘The fire of separation is the stuff of life; how sweet the intoxication of the day of separation!

The very name of union comes not to my lips; if I seek union, neither He remains nor I.’

The word ‘union’ made him out of himself; the burning agony was renewed in his heart.

He wallowed awhile in his own fumes; he became lost again in his own fumes;

Out of those fumes whirling a lament rose high; how blessed the soul that can feel anguish!