Observations placeholder

Nizami – Makhzanol Asrar (The Treasury of Mysteries) – extract from Describing the night and cognising the heart

When the word of the Heart reached my brain,
the oil of my brain fed the light of my lamp.

I listened intently in this company and made my soul
the target of the angel of the soul.

I gained eloquence from this nourishment.
I was full of happiness and my sorrows vanished.

I wept cold tears, because the fire of my Heart
had heated me.

I released my hands from those fetters.
The robbers were impotent and I was strong.

Galloping on that road, I travelled two stages,
until with one bound I reached the door of the Heart.

I went to the Heart and my life nearly expired.
Half of my life passed in that midnight.

At the door of my spiritual sanctuary,
the polo stick of my body bent into a ball.

My polo stick carried off the ball.
My head bent to my feet.

My feet and my head were joined together.
I was a ball and appeared like a polo stick

I lost control of my affairs and became unconscious of myself.
I saw a hundred things as one, and one thing as a hundred.

My fellow travellers were ignorant and I was a novice on the journey.
My exile was more bitter than my loneliness.

There was no way by which I could pass through that door;
I had no power to enter; neither could I retreat

Since I had lost my speech in that tunnel
Love, the guide, held my reins.

I knocked at the door, he said ‘Who comes at this hour?’  I replied
‘If it would please thee to give audience, it is a human being’.

The leaders drew back the curtain
and destroyed the veil of form.