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GOD IN HIS UNITY
MOST ANCIENT OF ALL.
NO MULTIPLICITY.
ALONE OF EVERYTHING
UNCREATED.
What say you? Why did He
make the universe
out of pearl?
neither matter for form
height nor breadth.
You agree: in every case
cause precedes effect
as ONE is prior to numbers
or part to the whole
and since heaven and earth (all agree)
are both effects
why consider heaven alone
a realm of knowledge and power
(like its own antecedent cause)?
What He brings today
from potency into Act
could just as well be
yesterday or tomorrow
since He is not in need
nor impotent. You claim
that between cause and effect
between nothingness and creation
some interval of TIME must intervene
but TIME itself is born
of the rolling spheres.
How can TIME exist?
a non-existent entity?
a beginningless void?
before the spheres themselves?
If you think of nothingness
subsisting in itself
then Unity must have an opposite
a partner in manifestation.
If nothingness
is merely a name or sound
would this not prove that even names
are not without their due effects?
God is above all
as ONE above the numbers:
only thus is TIME s existence known
that of PLACE refuted
genesis necessitated
and Eternity proven.
Do not if you are wise
attribute to HIM
any action but creatio ex nihilo
of a single being in the wink
of an eye
or less.
Do not speak of His Action
in such a way that His Essence
might be passive like our own
moulded in time by act
by the least of intentions.
ABSOLUTE UNITY:
seek nothing outside His Essence
for He is All-comprehensive
while the essences of things
are particular, determined.
If you claim He transcends all vision
do not attribute qualities to Him
for this would make Him
dual in essence
no longer singular, unique and ONE.
True, you see in this universe
a myriad things made of earth
wind, water, fire, metals and seas.
If you could float down
like Harut the fallen angel
from celestial spheres
then could you not
lift yourself up again
like the Morning Star?
EMANATION FROM ESSENCE
NOT FROM BEING:
the cause of the creation of one thing
must be ONE
The First Emanation is Intellect
then Soul, then Body,
plants, the abundance of beasts,
the Rational Animal.
Each Archetype contingent in itself
bu (in reality) an impossible being;
each one manifest in itself but
(in reality) a hidden non-existent.
What say you now? how this painted screen
is set up in the vasty air
like an enamelled pavilion pitched
in a desert of fire?
Does it move by itself or
has someone set it spinning?
keeps it revolving like this
around the zenith on high?
How do you define movement ?
Locomotion? Turning from one state
to another lowly or sublime?
Then explain to me please
its condition and locus
if you know. If you don t know
stay off the path of Wisdom
till your blindfold is untied.
When by way of demonstration
and deduction you speak
of NINE SPHERES -
what say you again?
what lies beyond these verdant fields?
If you answer VACUUM
I say you re wrong - impossible
that solid forms should hang
in a void. If you say
PLENUM - no no - one cannot conceive
a physical body without limit or end
like a sublime substance.
Then what keeps this ball of dust
suspended - so - between water and fire
thunderbolt and raging tempest?
If the elements are opposites in nature
why do the four of them
seem to embrace in an excess of unity
in a single place like
loving brothers? or if you say
they re not opposites in essence
why have they been given NAMES
which express their opposition?
BEGIN NOW
KNOW THYSELF and turn
your steed away from the
whirling spheres
and this duststained toy.
How can you taste Divine Mysteries
with the DEVIL in you
slashing about with his sword
duelling the inner ADAM?
Your vision of the
spiritual essence of things
reminds me of a blind man
dropped in the middle of the
soul-nourishing Garden of the Spirit
trying with his sightless eyes
to visualise the shapes and colours
of its delights.
YOU whirligig windowless jasper dome
with the hump of an old wife, power of youth
we your brood and you the unloving mother
you our mother! and yet so vengeful.
Black silent clay, this body s your baby
(not pure Intelligence nor rational Substance)
the body - abode of noble sublimities
and you the mother, mother of the house . . .
When I finish my work in this house today
I shall be off alone and tomorrow the house is yours.
MY SON this corpse of yours, this prison
will never be lovely even draped in silk brocades;
embellish your soul with the jewel of SPEECH
for the soul is ugly even in silk brocades.
Can you not see God s chains on your ankles
(only awakened souls can see them)?
Be a man in your chains and cinch your belt
nor dream your cell the realm of DARIUS:
those wh act in moderation find
kingdoms wider far than his.
Patience! no one finds heart s desire
but a man of patience;
and for sexual lust open the Qur an
to the story of Adam and Eve.
Stay out of harm s way and do no hurt
but justly, eye to eye:
stick to no petty grudge like the brambles
nor like the datepalm bend in humiliation
for dung is thrown in the pit because it sinks
sweet incence burned for its refreshing fragrance.
Don t run around with everyone nor shut yourself up alone -
walk wisdom s way - be neither fly nor gryphon:
if there s no one around worth talking to
then 100 times better alone than with idiots
(the SUN s alone - who blames it
or calls it less than the seven PLEIADES?)
Don t screw up your face at more or less;
do with what s given and be equitable with all.
The states of this vagabond world are fleeting
cold after heat, joy after sorrow -
better not to have grabbed for ephemeralities.
Listen - GOOD ADVICE - don t be a bilious fool.
Who cares if the earth is littered with pebbles or gold:
you will lie in your grave beneath a shack or a palace
(remember the man who built a castle in SANAA
now fallen to ruins in a ruined city).
The world s - a cunning devil whom the wise
have never cultivated for companionship;
if you have an ounce of sense don t swagger
in its sulphurous wake like a drunken clot.
The world s a bottomless mudchoked well -
don t lose your purified soul in its cloudy depths
(your soul purified by SPEECH - as the wise
through LOGOS have flown from well s-bottom to the stars).
Take pride in speech as the Prophet (who willed
not even a camel to his heirs) treasured his eloquence;
come to life in speech as Jesus
raised the dead with a word;
make yourself known through speech
for no one known if not by what he says . . .
But if you ve no ideas sew up your trap
for a word unspoken s better than an asinine remark.
Carve your utterance straight as quarrel s shaft
then shoot - don t fumble the bow.
Pay your attention to words than good looks
for man is SUBLIMED through speech not stature
(the almond gives better fruit than willows
or poplars which are taller;
a sober man may look like a tramp
but his words will brand him no drunk).
The ocean of LOGOS are the lovely words of God
sparkling with gemstones, glowing with pearls.
The outward form of Revelation: bitter as a gulp
of seawater - sweet pearls its innards to the wise.
If sunken treasure lies in ocean deeps
look for a diver - why run vainly down the strand?
Why has the Creator sunk these chests
of gems in briny weeded troughs?
Tell for the Prophet s sake! Who told HIM
to entrust the hermeneutic to the wise, words to the rabble?
The diver surfaces with a handful of slime
perhaps because he sees in you an enemy . . .
look for the pith of Revelation, don t follow the herd
content with husks like asses with their braying.
On the NIGHT OF POWER the mosques are bright as day
with your candles - but your heart is pitchy as 12 o clock;
don t waste wax - for tappers cannot banish
darkened from an ignorant heart.
You have not learned piety but from sheer pride
you solve riddles at midnight in an ebon well . . .
if you re not a snake why dot he believers
tremble in your hands and the Christians fear you?
Cease this rambling and giggling at the fortunes of life
for nothing on this dusty globe belongs to you.
How often the spinning spheres distracted the wise
and thrown their perfect peace in turbulence?
DARIUS left behind his slaves, his concubines
his castle and gold and departed with a decaying bag of skin.
Earth is a vulture, no creature safe
from its beak, neither lord nor butler.
A day comes in which is no shelter nor refuge
from the arbitration of a just and equitable Judge;
at that hour all shall be paid for their deeds
both the just and the unjust receive justice;
on that day of tumult in that turbulent crowd
before the martyrs of God I shall take refuge with
THE DAUGHTER OF MUHAMMAD
so that God the Almighty may decide
between me
and the enemies
of the household
of the Prophet.
You, whose name has not been formed by anyone,
whose proof not even intellect can grasp.
To label you would be a loathsome act
for you are far removed from genus and species:
neither a subject nor an attribute ,
neither a Substance nor an Accident.
The moralist can t order you about
nor any censor tells you what to say.
The dance of the Sun s disc through the skies
is your command and gives birth to the shades
of animals; you stir the painter s pot,
the whirling spheres, mixing and mingling all
your most heart-catching colours in the stars.
The very mention of your name in the Nest
of Glory cuts off the wing of Gabriel;
on the Throne of Sanctity your lowliness
unveils the jewels which grace the bride of heaven.
Creation testifies that you were here before it,
and pre-eternity swears to your permanence.
O luminous sun, veiled by your shadow of light,
goal of all lovers, beyond their petty loves,
the paradoxical treasure of Qarun
(which is never where you find it) symbolises
your single pearl, concealed within two jewels -
two jewels which created the world, two gems
which chastised Adam.
The Universe is like
a rolling sea, our planet a tiny skiff
and Nature the anchor; its waves are trees, the stones
which wash up on the beach are animals;
but one, the pearl, the crimson carnelian
if YOU - the lonely beast endowed with speech.
And who is the diver? the Active Intellect
(worthy to be the mind of the Prophet himself).
What is the end? the same as was the beginning.
What is the goal? To seek that which is the best.
Behold the Good, if you have eyes, listen
to Truth, if you have ears to hear it with.
Lust s falcon has snatched you up in its beak, a dove
from Time s snare - have you forgotten, my brother,
Adam our father s sin and repentant tears?
I give a gift wrapped in veils of allusion
hoping you can slice away its seals
with meditation s sword: Adam ate
no bread in Eden; man was not the eater
of grain till his feet crossed the threshold of earth.
All this had happened to Adam when Satan s dam
had not yet come to birth.
What do you say
of Satan s refusal to worship man? Was he forced
not to bow, or did he have free choice to refuse?
If the power was his, to prostrate or not, then God
was impotent; but if God had pre-ordained
him to refusal, then God must be unjust.
No, give up thinking of work which is not your work
and cease to tread a path which is not your way.
No longer seek in vain the Water of Life
in the midst of your own darkness, like some lost
and bootless Alexander; for there were Khizr
found the fountain, the demon is no more
companion of the angel of our soul.
Freewill and Determination.
Who forced you to go for all this
eating and running around and sleeping and waking up
and what s the good of it? If this fate
didn t tickle your palate, why
have you spent your life guzzling and snoring?
How have you become such a disaster to yourself?
Tell the truth (wise men always tell the truth):
if you yourself destined to such a fate
then you must be your own Maker!
but this is manifestly bad doctrine. No,
the truth is that God s chains are upon you
and this abode is your pasturing place.
But munching grass and chewing cud
- damn! - this is work for cows!
How then do you explain your curious love
for the pasture? Ah, gourmet of hay,
all your fear and sorrow is the fear
of decrease - which cannot be avoided.
How in this hurlyburly world do you expect
to find permanence? Becoming the Change
to the wise are signs of Annihilation.
Your state changes, the stars shift about
day gives way to night - are these
not witnesses of the world s impermanence?
My dear tourist; this earth is like
a room in a onenight hotel, your journey
towards to Abode of Eternity.
Do not forget your passing from this place -
even if the house is torn down
religion prospers. Do not debase yourself
for finally someday however late a last
you must depart this caravanserai.
Make your provision for the road
obedience to God, devotion
the coin you spend on this difficult journey.
Gird yourself in armour of godliness and wisdom
for there lurks along the path a hideous dragon.
When you reach the fork, choose the best way
for one street lead to felicity, the other to Hell.
When the Prophet himself has come to you
with promise and threats, how can you claim
that Good and Evil are written, kismet, Fate?
Why try to shift the burden of sin and sloth
on to the shoulders of Destiny? Nonesense!
If God destined you to sin
then - according to you - the sin is God s
the evil-doer is God (hideous belief!)
Even if you don t dare to draw
the logical conclusion, in fear of getting
knocked on the head. Yes, that s your doctrine
even if your tongue proclaims Him Judge
the Wisest of Men, God knows
your tongue and heart do not agree - but you
lie boldfaced to the Lord of the Universe.
The wiseman treads midway
between Fate and Freewill
the path of the learned threads between hope and fear.
Seek you the Straight Way likewise
for either extreme leads to pain and suffering.
Straight indeed is that Way in religion
approved by Intellect, the gift of God to Man.
Justice is the Cornerstone of the Cosmos
- and consider! - by what faculty is justice
distinguished from tyranny except by Reason?
If man follows the tracks of Reason
it would not be wrong to expect to see
pearls spring up in his footprints from the soil.
Reason - Wisdom - only for this
and its radiant dignity does the Lord
of the Universe applaud and deign to address
his creature Man. Wisdom is the prop
for every weakness, relief from every sorrow
comfort in every fear, balm for each ill
noble companion, bulwark in the way of the world
and in religion a trusty guide, a stout staff.
Even if the whole Universe were free
it would be in bondage - but the wiseman
even in chains would be at liberty.
The Sage! Study him well with an awakened eye
and see by contrast with what black plague
this ignorant world is afflicted.
This one tells All actions are performed
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? (missing whilst photocopying)
submission and contentment. That one replies
All good is from God, all evil, O World
your work alone . But both parties
Agree on one thing at least, that a Great Day
is coming, a day of reward and punishment.
But if the work is not mine, how
shall be rewarded? Look: Illogic!!!
Where s the justice in chastising the innocent?
You may see it but I am nonplussed. No,
this arbitrator of your ( your in italic) judgement day
is the Drunkard of Sodom, not the Wise Being
who has built the vault of Heaven.
True wisdom could never lead us astray
in such error - then follow Wisdom s manifest Way.
Know the God of the Universe and be grateful -
these two precepts are worth more to you
than all the powers of Solomon.
Learn to be wise. Do not prattle
but speak in measure. Know that on the Last Day
these things have value, these are priceless.
The True Man is robed in Faith and virtue
- even fine silks cannot disguise
the art-less and wicked. Endeavour
to become a man by SPEECH - know
that for such a man all creatures
are but weeds and thorns. GOOD SPEECH
is to man s heart a air and water
to his body - a source of life.
Listen then O noble heart to the PROOF
for to the truly noble, his words are nobility.