Vol. 10

Stay, O night — the speaker asks darkness to remain, tells the moon to go away. Grief desires its own proper setting: night, wakefulness, the space to burn and mourn without dawn interrupting.

My eyes' enchantment has led you astray — why do you claim your heart is hard as iron? In this cup of lips I carry a wine that fells men; you will never find a warmer embrace; do not stray — the dark stone of a sorrowful grave awaits.

From the dark prison, from the dark swamp — a prayer of need. God addressed as the only one aware of the first transgression, the only one capable of restoring the soul's original purity.

Far from you every night until dawn I weep like the candle of the gathering; the cup brimful of tears; like a shadow I have fallen in your lane, hopeful eyes toward you — alas for my futile hope.

If the hidden were manifest — I am that manifest hidden one. If the ignorant were wise — I am that wise ignorant one. A poem of spiritual paradox and self-assertion: the Huma, the alert drunk, the moon to the sphere of love.

Ah, how wonderfully you came — the speaker greets the beloved's unexpected return with wonder and a gentle question: what fault did faithlessness have, that you finally repented of it?

Let me weep in this dark midnight — like a cloud over the rose garden in the mourning of hope's fading flowers; this love draws me into the abyss of madness.

I am ruined by intoxication — I am all wine, all wine, O God. The Sufi kharab (ruin) as spiritual state: the self dissolved by love, the desert crossed toward a Kaaba that keeps receding.