Three days it is now since my fair one has become changed; sugar is never bitter—how is it that that sugar is sour?
I dipped my pitcher into the fountain that contained the Water of Life, and I saw that the fountain was full of blood.
In the garden where two hundred thousand roses grew, in place of fruit and blossom there are thorns and stones and desert.
I chant a spell and whisper it over the face of that peri—for incantation is always the business of the exorcist—
Yet for all my incantations my peri came not back into the bottle, since his activities transcend chants and spells.
Between his brow there are ancient angers; the frown on the brow of Lail¯a is destruction to Majn¯un.
Come, come, for without you I have no life; see, see, for without you my eyes are a veritable flood.
By the right of your moonlike countenance, brighten my eye, though my sins are greater than the whole of mankind’s.
My heart turns about itself, saying, “What is my sin? For every cause is conjoined with a consequence.”
A proclamation comes to me from the Marshal of eternal judgment: “Seek not about your own self, for this cause belongs not to now.”
God gives and seizes, brings and carries away; His business is not to be measured by reason’s scales.
Come, come, for even now by the grace of Be and it is paradise opens its gate which is ungrudging.
Of the essence of the thorn you behold marvellous flowers; of the essence of the stone you see the treasure of Korah.
Divine grace is eternal, and thereof a thousand keys lie hidden between the k¯af and the ship of the n¯un.
