Sufi poem from Khwaju Kermani

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Sufi poem from Khwaju Kermani

Here is a Sufi poem some of you might like from Khwaju Kermani, a
Persian Sufi poet (d. 8th/14th cent.):

We're tavern haunters, lovers, drunken
We've offered up our sweet souls, placing them into our outstretched
palms

We're idolized slaves dwelling in monasteries, pierced by the earring
of bondage,
Gulping down whatever the wine worshipping Magian masters bestow

How long will you keep giving me useless advice?! Since now
My affairs are out of control, the arrow has long since been loosed

The eyes of those Turkish beauties opened up the mistaken way
The tresses of the gorgeous ones closed the door of what is right.

How will he return to his senses,
whoever has lost his self through the wine of "Am I not" [your Lord]?

The wine worshipers are awestruck by the brew
The gnostics are drunk from the bartender's beauty

At last, O you who unleash chaos in this age, desist!
So that a shriek will not rise from the folk who sit.

If the world and everything in it were not to be,
as long as You are, whatever must be is.

Shot from the bow of the spirit-filled eyebrow
this cry arrives and goes right to the heart:

The world is the outer form and the inward is the Beloved,
And if you don't get it, look at the inward, all is That.

(Khwaju Kermani, Divan, p. 506)