بخش 96 - تفسیر ما شاء الله کان

We have spoken all these words, but in preparing ourselves (for the journey before us) we are naught, naught without the favours of God.

Without the favours of God and God's elect ones, angel though he be, his page is black.

O God, O Thou whose bounty fulfils (every) need, it is not allowable to mention any one beside Thee.

This amount of guidance Thou hast bestowed (upon us); till this (present time) Thou hast covered up many a fault of ours.

Cause the drop of knowledge which Thou gavest (us) heretofore to become united with Thy seas.

In my soul there is a drop of knowledge: deliver it from sensuality and from the body's clay,

Before these clays drink it up, before these winds sweep it away,

Although, when they sweep it away, Thou art able to take it back from them and redeem it.

The drop that vanished in the air or was spilled (on the earth)—when did it flee (escape) from the storehouse of Thy omnipotence?

If it enter into non-existence or a hundred non-existences, it will make a foot of its head (will return in headlong haste) when Thou callest it.

Hundreds of thousands of opposites are killing their opposites: Thy decree is drawing them forth again (from non-existence).

There is caravan on caravan, O Lord, (speeding) continually from non-existence towards existence.

In particular, every night all thoughts and understandings become naught, plunged in the deep Sea;

Again at the time of dawn those Divine ones lift up their heads from the Sea, like fishes.

In autumn the myriads of boughs and leaves go in rout into the sea of Death,

(While) in the garden the crow clothed in black like a mourner makes lament over the (withered) greenery.

Again from the Lord of the land comes the edict (saying) to Non-existence, “Give back what thou hast devoured!

Give up, O black Death, what thou hast devoured of plants and healing herbs and leaves and grass!”

O brother, collect thy wits for an instant (and think): from moment to moment (incessantly) there is autumn and spring within thee.

Behold the garden of the heart, green and moist and fresh, full of rosebuds and cypresses and jasmines;

Boughs hidden by the multitude of leaves, vast plain and high palace hidden by the multitude of flowers.

These words, which are from Universal Reason, are the scent of those flowers and cypresses and hyacinths.

Didst thou (ever) smell the scent of a rose where no rose was? Didst thou (ever) see the foaming of wine where no wine was?

The scent is thy guide and conducts thee on thy way: it will bring thee to Eden and Kawthar.

The scent is a remedy for the (sightless) eye; (it is) light-making: the eye of Jacob was opened by a scent.

The foul scent darkens the eye, the scent of Joseph succours the eye.

Thou who art not a Joseph, be a Jacob: be (familiar), like him, with weeping and sore distress.

Hearken to this counsel from the Sage of Ghazna, that thou mayst feel freshness in thy old body:

“Disdain needs a face like the rose; when thou hast not (such a face), do not indulge in ill-temper.

Ugly is disdain in an uncomely face, grievous is eye-ache in an unseeing eye.”

In the presence of Joseph do not give thyself airs and behave like a beauty: offer nothing but the supplication and sighs of Jacob.

The meaning of dying (as conveyed) by the parrot was supplication (self-abasement): make thyself dead in supplication and poverty (of spirit),

That the breath of Jesus may revive thee and make thee fair and blessed as itself.

How should a rock be covered with verdure by the Spring? Become earth, that thou mayst grow flowers of many a hue.

Years hast thou been a heart-jagging rock: once, for the sake of experiment, be earth!