This time I am wholly involved in loverhood, this time I am wholly cut off from well-being.
I have plucked out my heart from myself, I am living with something else, I have burned up from root and stock reason and heart and thought.
O men, O men, manhood comes from me no more; the madman even does not meditate what I have meditated in my heart.
The unlucky madman has fled from my turbulence; I am commingled with death, I have flown into not-being.
Today my reason has become wholly disgusted with me; it desires to terrify me, thinking that I have no eyes.
Why indeed should I be afraid of it? I have put on a grimace for its sake. How should I be confused? But I am purposely so confounded.
I am quit of the bowl of the stars and the blood of the skies; I have licked many a bowl for the benefit of the beggarly-faced people.
For a good purpose I have remained in the prison of this world; what have I to do with prison? Whose property have I stolen?
In the body’s prison I am drowned in blood, and of the tears of every stubborn one’s eyes I have rubbed in the dust my bloodstained skirt.
Like an infant in the womb my nurture is of blood; ordinary men are born once, I have been born many times.
Examine me as much as you will, you will not recognize me, for I have become a hundred different manners from what you have seen me to be.
Enter my eye and behold me with my own sight, for I have chosen a dwelling place beyond all sight.
You are drunk, drunk and happy, I am drunk and happy, without a head; you are a lover with laughing lips, I am laughing without any mouth.
A strange bird am I, who of my own desire, without snare or catcher, have crept into the cage;
For the cage in the company of friends is sweeter than orchard and garden; to please the Josephs I have reposed in the well.
Do not bewail his blow, do not claim sickness; I have given a hundred sweet lives to purchase this calamity.
Like a silkworm at the cost of suffering you enter into satin and silk; give ear to a silkworm that has withered in the very garment.
You have withered in the tomb of the body; go before my Israfil saying, “For my sake blow on the trumpet, for I am weary of the tomb of the body.”
No, no, like the well-tried falcon hood your eyes from yourself; I have put on brocade like a fine peacock.
Bow your head to the physician saying, “Give me the antidote, for in this pleasant net I have swallowed many poisons.”
Before the confectioner of the soul you will become sweet and sweet of soul, for from the confection of the soul I have waxed great as a sugarcane.
He will make your essence confection better than by giving a hundred confections; I have not heard the delight of the soul’s confection save from his lips.
Be silent, for in speaking the confection falls out of the mouth; without speech a man catches a scent such as I have snuffed.
Every unripe grape is lamenting, “O Shams-i Tabr¯ız¯ı, come, for on account of unripeness and lack of savour I groan within myself.”
