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Ghazal 742
Out of jealousy, Love makes the lover appear like everyone's enemy.
Once it has made people reject him, he turns to It.
He who is worthy of the creatures is not worthy for Love –
only the whore's soul marries a hundred husbands.
Since the lover is not suited for "others," let them all reject him –
then the King of Love will make him His sitting companion.
When the creatures drive him from themselves,
he cuts himself off from their company; he accustoms his
outward and inward to sweet-natured Love.
But when the creatures accept him, his mind
drags him in their direction and his heart turns furtively this
way and that toward anyone's love.
When Love sees this It says, "My tresses have thrown a shadow,
so the lover smells there the fragrance of musk and ambergris.
I will make these two scents the enemy of his mind and brain –
he will have to abandon both.
Though the lover has sniffed the musk in remembrance of Me,
only a beginner on the Path wanders like a child saying, 'Where? Where?'
Once he has left childhood, he will open the eye of knowledge –
why should he run to and fro on the river bank looking for water?"
If you have newly become a lover, take the bitter medicine and drink it,
so that Shirin may make you sweeter than Khusraw's honey.1
Perhaps Shams-I Tabrizi will intoxicate you
from beyond the two worlds and remove you from
yourself!
Translation by William C. Chittick
"The Sufi Path of Love"
SUNY Press, Albany, 1983
1 King Khusraw and Shirin are a pair of lovers often
celebrated in Persian verse. Khusraw I or "royal" honey
was a famous kind of exquisite honey. Shirin, whose
name literally means "sweet," of course represents the
Beloved.
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