Inside me reflecting mirrors,
Reflecting me beyond mincing
Words, not beyond what I know!

Apart from my changing body,
Apart from my invisible spirit
I am a stranger in the ocean
Of my being with no identity

I am not living, can you sniff
The stink of sludge and decay?

You talk in whispers of my madness,
But look beyond my babbling science
To the asylum of truth, I want to say

Look at me with my containing head
Topping my dervish cloak, do I remind
You of someone you think you know?
This container holds upside-down with
Swelling joy, a liquid not spilling a drop!
If a precious drop escapes, it falls to God
Becomes fixed like the lacquer of pearls.

I grow like a cloud over that ocean of
Liquid absorbing that vapour into myself
When the radiance of Shams shines on
Me I grow heavy and rich with longing,
And I rain. Then it's spring time and slender
Lillies rise up like the shape of my tongue.

*       *       *

Heart in tumult, our hermit beings blunted with
The rasp of inward noise; here now,
There in tomorrow's heart. Ears stuffed with
Cotton wool, eyes distracted by a single hair
Sharp as a blade of grass. We wait anxiously
For tears of grief to spill over like lava onto our cheeks.
Let Love invade you and consume that deadening wool,
Let your heart become an audience like Hallaj,
Like the audacious saints of purity.
You know what happens if you place a naked flame
By cotton wool, the flame will eat up
Its dessicated convulsions. You are skirting
On the lip of Love so prepare yourself, throw open
The mantle of your senses to joy. For the lover's death
Is the willing return on the way to the One;
If, entangled in the fingers of grief,
You fear death, this is no place for you
So far as this existence is a prison
Which bricks up your senses,
The destruction of this cell
Is our innocent ambition.
But his prison is like a palace,
His palace is a heaven.
There's no lasting monument in this life
Where even mountains are like balls of cotton
In this faithless circus of passing beauty,
There's no belonging in the hovel
Of space and time, there is no loyalty.