بخش 192 - جواب گفتن عاشق عاذلان را

He said, “O sincere advisers, I have become unrepentantly weary of the world of life.

I am an idle vagabond, seeking blows and desiring blows: do not seek rectitude from the vagabond on the road.

(I am) not the vagabond who in sooth is a seeker of provender: I am the reckless vagabond (who is) the seeker of death.

(I am) not the vagabond who gets small money into his palm, (but) the nimble vagabond who would cross this bridge (to the world hereafter)—

Not the one who cleaves to every shop; nay, but (the one who) springs away from (phenomenal) existence and strikes upon a mine (of reality).

Death and migration from this (earthly) abode has become as sweet to me as leaving the cage and flying (is sweet) to the (captive) bird—

The cage that is in the very midst of the garden, (so that) the bird beholds the rose-beds and the trees,

(While) outside, round the cage, a multitude of birds is sweetly chanting tales of liberty:

At (the sight of) that verdant place neither (desire for) food remains to the bird in the cage, nor patience and rest,

(But) it puts out its head through every hole, that perchance it may tear off this fetter from its leg.

Since its heart and soul are (already) outside like this, how will it be when you open the cage?”

Not such is the bird caged amidst anxieties—cats round about it in a ring:

How, in this dread and sorrow, should it have the desire to go out of the cage? It wishes that, (to save it) from this unwelcome plucking (of its feathers), there might be a hundred cages round about this cage (in which it is confined).

The love of (a) Galen is for this present life, for only here does his art avail; he has not practised any art that avails in yonder market: there he sees himself to be the same as the vulgar.