Ismaili.NET - Heritage F.I.E.L.D.

Night: shoreless shadowed stormwracked sea;

the sphere of Night: a desert of roses smeared with indigo.

Slopes, hillocks, high places stand still and silent

as terminal giants hunched in cureless melancholy.

Heaven has washed its face in tar and rests unmoving

as if God the Singular had never created it.

Wilderness, bewildered with sadness, grows no lighter

with the bilious dawn. Rays of light

cannot move from eyes to touch faces,

echoes cannot find their way to any ear

as if Earth the Sorcerer had taken existence away

from all things and left the whirling sky a lunatic.

The Empyrean grinds to a halt - one might think

in all the world no creature stirs or breathes.

Under the narrow ebon canopy of night I open my eye

- nothing. I close my eye upon no dream.

My physical eye looks upon night, the eye of my heart

looks upon the void, like a lonely sentinel

in the midst of the sleeping army. My physical eye

sees the stars as vigilant guards. The heart s eye

sees no one awake, no wiseman, no sage.

The stars: a paradise of black-eyed girls;

the clouds part and reveal their smiling eyes

like a bit of luck amidst the general bane -

Go, have a look: the Pleiades, cluster of white roses

shining in dark grass like lost gems of ancient kings;

Capella s bloodshot eye in the West, like a bersker

staring down in foe; Jupiter like Joseph

in the inky well, Venus pale and perplexed as Zulaikha;

the sky, Mary s jewel-encrusted tabernacle;

stars like monks, the Hyades a crucifix.

My eye, ear, heart, breathlessly wake, hoping

for a streak of dawn, a sound in that terrible stillness,

for if my soul forgets, my learned intellect recalls

that in all the Universe, nothing begins but comes to an end.

Night s raven crosses the boundary from Jabulsa to Jabulkqa,

dawn rises at last, a griffon from a ruby s heart,

legions of darkness flea before the ranks of morning

as error dissipated before Truth s face;

the stars blush like maidens in purdah

caught by their mothers without their veils,

and fall, fall headlong into the Sun, as in the end

all parts rejoin the Whole at last.

Ah, Nasir, you speak too much of stars and night;

look in your wisdom on the world s affairs;

the universe, a sea of eloquent pearls,

the Ocean of Time, men its frail ships.

Praise God, Who makes His ablutions and shakes

the water from His hands, which falls

into the heavens, each drop a star.

The constellations of good fortune are nothing

without the light of His face; the skies

have no breadth but in His Kingdom s expanse.

Such ranks He bestows on me in His generosity

no sage before me is wise, no prince sublime.

From this world I seek but fellowship in Faith,

companions such as never Heaven not earth have known.

I praise the peerless Lord, the Almighty Friend

from Whom all power flows. I have woven

a silk brocade and sewn it with Wisdom

such as never left the looms of Byzantium;

I have raised a tree, fresh and tall as the Ash of Paradise,

every leaf a gold word, every line sweet as a date.