We are dancing like motes, we obey the command of your sun.
Every dawn out of Love’s east like the sun we rise.
We thresh about in dry and wet, we become not dry, nor turn wet.
We have heard brasses making much lament, “O light, shine, that we may become gold.”
For the sake of their need and anguish we rise to the spheres and the stars.
We come as amber for a necklace from the silver-bosomed Beloved.
We have beaten our dervish frock, to emerge from that to a gown of Shushtar.
We are the drainers of pure wine on the path of poverty, we are intoxicated with the red wine.
If they impose on us the world’s poison, we come as sugar out of our inward parts.
On the day when brave men flee, we come as Sanjar in the thick of the battle;
We make wine of the foeman’s blood, then we drain it and come like daggers.
We are the ring of drunken lovers, every day we come as a ring on the door.
He wrote the sign-manual of security for us; how should we come to the rattle of mere death?
In the supernal kingdom and placelessness we come on the steed of the green sphere.
We went into hiding from the world of the flesh, we come more manifest in the world of Love.
In the body the soul has become pure; we become bodiless and come yet purer.
Shams-i Tabr¯ız is the soul of the soul; we come shoulder to shoulder in the house of eternity.
