Free will...Idries Shah!

A certain Sufi master was walking along a country road with one of his disciples. The disciple said: “I know that the best day of my life was when I decided to seek you out, and when I discovered that through your presence I would find myself.”The Sufi said: “Decision, whether for support or opposition, is a thing which you do not know until you know it. You do not know it through thinking that you know it.”The disciple said: “Your meaning is obscure to me, and your statement is dark, and your intention is veiled from me.”The master said: “You will in few moments see something about the value of decision, and who it is that makes decisions.”Presently they came to a meadow, where a farm worker was throwing a stick to a dog. The Sufi said: “I will count five, and he will throw three sticks to the dog.”Sure enough, when the Sufi had so counted, the man picked up three sticks and threw them to the dog, even though they were out of earshot and the man had not seen the pair.Now the Sufi said: “I will count three, and the man will sit down.”As soon as he had counted to three, the man did indeed sit down,suddenly, on the ground.Now the disciple, full of wonder, said: “Could he be induced to raise his arms into the air?”The Sufi nodded and, as they watched, the man’s hands rose towards the sky. The disciple was amazed, but the Sufi said: “Let us now approach this man and speak with him.” When they had saluted the farm worker,the Sufi said to him: “Why did you throw three sticks instead of one for the dog to retrieve?”The farm man answered: “I decided to do it as a test, to see whether he could follow more than one stick.”“So it was your own decision?” “Yes,” said the man, “nobody told me to do it.”“And” said the Sufi, “why did you sit down so suddenly?”“Because I thought I would rest.”“Did anyone suggest it?”“There is nobody here to suggest it.”“And when you raised your arms in the air, why was that?”“Because I decided that it was lazy to sit on the ground, and I felt that raising my arms towards Heaven would indicate that I should work rather than rest, and that inspiration to overcome laziness came from on high.”“Was that a decision of your own and nobody else’s?”“There was, indeed, nobody to make such a decision for me, and in any case it followed from my previous action.”The Sufi now turned to the disciple and said: “Immediately before this experience, you were saying to me that you were glad you had made certain decisions, such as the one that you should seek me out.”The disciple was completely silent. But the farm worker said: “I know you dervishes. You are trying to impress this hapless youth with your powers, but it is sure to be a form of trickery.”
~as collected by Idries Shah

Rumi

Your likeness in the abode of illusion
Is the likeness of the seller of ice in Nishapur.
In the heat of July he places before him the block of ice
But no buyer is there, and this man is a dervish.

The block of ice has melted in the heat, and the man

With pained heart and bitter regret

Laments with tears flowing from his eyes

Only a little remains, and no buyer is left

Rumi

My ablution is with weeping

thus my prayer will be fiery

And I burn the mosque's doorway when my call to prayer strike it

Is the prayer of the drunken, tell me, is this prayer valid?

For he does not know the timing and is not aware of places

Hazrat Sultan Bahu R.A.

The soul has come to lodge in this body

A desolate wilderness,

A rapidly crumbling bank of the river of time.

It will collapse tomorrow, if not today.

Lodged on the edge of such a shore,

How can a traveller sleep in peace?

For where sand and water meet,

No embankment can hold, O Bahu.

Sheikh Ansari - Kashf al_Asrar

'Pursuit of the Friend'

~

The heart left,

and the Friend is (also) gone.

I don't know whether I should go after the Friend

or after the heart!

A voice spoke to me:

"Go in pursuit of the Friend,

because the lover needs a heart

in order to find union with the Friend.

If there was no Friend,

what would (the lover) do with (his) heart?"

Rumi

Longing is the core of mystery.

Longing itself brings the cure.

The only rule is,

Suffer the pain.

Your desire must be disciplined,

and what you want to happen

in time,

sacrificed.

Baba Bulleh Shah!

RaaNjha raaNjha kardi ni maeN

Aape raaNjha hoi,

Sado ni menu dhido raaNjha,

Heer na aakho koi.

RaaNjha maeN vich maeN raaNjhe vich,

Hor khayaal na koi,

MaeN naheeN,

o aap hai Aapani aap kare dil joi.

Hath khunDi,

mere ahge maNgu,

MoDHe bhoora loe,

Bulha heer saleTi vekho Kithe ja khaloi.

~~

~~

Repeating his name,

I have become RaaNjha .

Call me Ranjha , not Heer .
Ranjha is in me and I in Ranjha .

No other thought exists.

It is he who has done this, not I.

He does it to amuse himself.
Staff in hand, bowl outstretched,

A coarse brown blanket on his shoulder.

Look, says Bulha ,

Where Heer stands!

Hazrat Shah Hussain

"I dance because the doubt has vanished;

I’m full of faults and without any quality.

Show me compassion, Oh Allah.

The worldly people are proud of their riches.

To the recluse, renunciation is a cover.

I am neither a recluse, nor a worldly man.

So everyone laughs at me.

I am Husain, the Faqir of Allah.”

Attar of Nishapur

The Arrow
When an arrow is loosed from the bow, it may go straight and or it may not.

It is dependent on the archer, which way it goes.
However, so strange it is that when the arrow speeds without deviation,

it is the archer whose skill it is attributed to.

But if it looses its path, it is the arrow that is blamed for the flaw.

Baba Farid!

"Bhijoy sujhoy kambli Allah wirsay meen
Jai millaan tahaan sajnaa tate nahin neounay"

"Drenched and smirched be the cloak;

let God's cloud pour out all the waters:

Go I must; I go to keep my word of love."

Selected works of Theodore Roethke

My secrets cry aloud.

I have no need for tongue.

My heart keeps open house,

My doors are widely swung.

An epic of the eyes

My love, with no disguise.
"Open House," ll. 1-6

The wind sharpened itself on a rock;

A voice sang:
Pleasure on ground
Has no sound,
Easily maddens
The uneasy man.
"The Shape of the Fire," ll. 40 - 45

Mother of quartz, your words writhe into my ear.

Renew the light, lewd whisper.
"The Shape of the Fire," ll. 54 - 55

The wasp waits.

The edge cannot eat the center.

The grape listens.

The path tells little to the serpent.

An eye comes out of the wave.

The journey from flesh is longest.

A rose sways least.

The redeemer comes a dark way.
"The Shape of the Fire," ll. 56-63

Death was not. I lived in a simple drowse:

Hands and hair moved through a dream of wakening blossoms.

Rain sweetened the cave and the dove still called;

The flowers leaned on themselves, the flowers in hollows;

And love, love sang toward.
"The Shape of the Fire," ll. 73-77

To stare into the after-light,

the glitter left on the lake's surface,

When the sun has fallen behind a wooded island;

To follow the drips sliding from a lifted oar

Held up, while the rower breathes, and the small boat drifts quietly shoreward;

To know that light falls and fills, often without our knowing.
The Shape of the Fire," ll. 88-92

I'll seek my own meekness.

What grace I have is enough.

The lost have their own pace.

The stalks ask something else.

What the grave says,

The nest denies.
"Unfold! Unfold!," ll. 59-64

Bless me and the maze I'm in!

Hello, thingy spirit.
"I Cry, Love! Love!," ll. 20-21

Beginnings start without shade,

Thinner than minnows.

The live grass whirls with the sun,

Feet run over the simple stones,

There's time enough.

Behold, in the lout's eye, love.
"I Cry, Love! Love!," ll. 33-39

Is pain a promise?

I was schooled in pain,

And found out what I could of all desire;

I weep for what I'm like when I'm alone

In the deep center of the voice and fire.
I know the motion of the deepest stone.

Each one's himself, yet each one's everyone.
"The Sententious Man," ll. 31-36

The night wind rises.

Does my father live?

Dark hangs upon the waters of the soul.

My flesh is breathing slower than a wall.

Love alters all. Unblood my instinct, love.
"The Renewal," ll. 7-10

The moon draws back its waters from the shore.

By the lake's edge, I see a silver swan,

And she is what I would.

In this light air,Lost opposites bend down —

Sing of that nothing of which all is made,

Or listen into silence, like a god.
"The Swan," ll. 15-20

Too much reality can be a dazzle, a surfeit;

Too close immediacy an exhaustion
"The Abyss"

A terrible violence of creation,

A flash into the burning heart of the abominable;

Yet if we wait, unafraid, beyond the fearful instant,

The burning lake turns into a forest pool,

The fire subsides into rings of water,A sunlit silence.
"The Abyss"

Being, not doing, is my first joy.
"The Abyss"

Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire;

What burns me now? Desire, desire, desire.
I bleed my bones, their marrow to bestow

Upon that God who knows what I would know.
"The Marrow"

Let others probe the mystery if they can.

Time-harried prisoners of Shall and Will —

The right thing happens to the happy man.
"The Right Thing," ll. 1-3

God bless the roots! —

Body and soul are one!

The small become the great, the great the small;

The right thing happens to the happy man.
"The Right Thing," ll. 7-9

And I dance with William Blake

For love, for Love's sake;
And everything comes to One,

As we dance on, dance on, dance on.
Once More, the Round," ll. 11-12

Yet for this we travelled

With hope, and not alone,

In the country of ourselves,

In a country of bright stone.
"The Harsh Country," ll. 13-16

"A lively understandable spirit

Once entertained you.

It will come again.

Be still.

Wait."

"Love begets love.

This torment is my joy."

Man and Animal! (Idries Shah)

The mouse said: “I want to find crumbs.”

The dog said: “I have come to find crusts.”

The simpleton said: “What you need is bread, you fools!”

The wise man said: “But you could let them have other kinds offood…”

The simpleton was annoyed. He said:

“The common denominator oftheir desires is bread, not food.

You are becoming too complicated. ”

"O Love-sick one,what did you blow into my heart

That it is a river of blazing fire passing through my heart...."

~Khwaja saheb Majzoob RA

John Masefield

FLESH, I have knocked at many a dusty door,

Gone down full many a midnight lane,

Probed in old walls and felt along the floor,

Pressed in blind hope the lighted window-pane,

But useless all, though sometimes when the moon

Was full in heaven and the sea was full,

Along my body's alleys came a tune

Played in the tavern by the Beautiful.

Then for an instant I have felt at point

To find and seize her, whosoe'er she be,

Whether some saint whose glory doth anoint

Those whom she loves, or but a part of me,

Or something that the things not understood

Make for their uses out of flesh and blood.

Rumi

Reason says,

I will win him with my eloquence.

Love says,

I will win him with my silence.

Soul says,

How can I ever win him

When all I have is already his?

He does not want, he does not worry,

He does not seek a sublime state of euphoria -

How then can I win him

With sweet wine or gold?

He is not bound by the senses -

How then can I win him

With all the riches of China?

He is an angel,

Though he appears in the form of a man.

Even angels cannot fly in his presence -

How then can I win him

By assuming a heavenly form?

He flies on the wings of God,

His food is pure light -

How then can I win him

With a loaf of baked bread?

He is neither a merchant, nor a tradesman -

How then can I win him

With a plan of great profit?

He is not blind, nor easily fooled -

How then can I win him

By lying in bed as if gravely ill?

I will go mad, pull out my hair,

Grind my face in the dirt -

How will this win him?

He sees everything -how can I ever fool him?

He is not a seeker of fame,

A prince addicted to the praise of poets -

How then can I win him

With flowing rhymes and poetic verses?

The glory of his unseen form

Fills the whole universe

How then can I win him

With a mere promise of paradise?

I may cover the earth with roses,

I may fill the ocean with tears,

I may shake the heavens with praises -

none of this will win him.

There is only one way to win him,

this Beloved of mine -

Become his!

O tongue, you are an endless treasure.

O tongue, you are also an endless disease.

~Rumi!

When you arrive at the sea, you

Do not talk of the tributary.

~
(Hakim Sanai, The Walled Garden of Truth)

The Answer

We wrote a hundred letters, and you did not write an answer.This, too, is a reply. - Zauqi

(Text Source: from Book "The Way Of The Sufi" by Idries Shah)

William Shakespeare

LOVE'S MEMORY
FROM "ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL," ACT I. SC. I.

I am undone: there is no living, none,

If Bertram be away. It were all one,

That I should love a bright particular star,

And think to wed it, he is so above me:

In his bright radiance and collateral light

Must I be comforted, not in his sphere.

The ambition in my love thus plagues itself:

The hind that would be mated by the lion

Must die for love.

'Twas pretty, though a plague,

To see him every hour; to sit and draw

His archèd brows, his hawking eye, his curls,

In our heart's table,--heart too capable

Of every line and trick of his sweet favor:

But now he's gone, and my idolatrous fancy

Must sanctify his relics.

Nazrul Islam

We will meet again in the life Hereafter;

Here, please, forget me with a simple laughter.

Anything that remained unsaid,I won't say;

Let you also keep silence;

If I offer my love, turn me away;

If I persist, hurt me, in pretense.
Dream is broken abruptly here,

The evening's bud sheds in the dawn

The heart dries up before love is savored;

The ambrosia here has the taste of poison.
In separation here, heart longs in agony;

When together, quickly we go apart;

Where the fountain of love is never dry,

In that everlasting Garden,

remember to seek my heart.

Edmond Rostand

Malebranche dirait qu’il n’y a plus une âme:
Nous pensons humblement qu’il reste encor des cœurs.

[translated]: Malebranche would have it that not a soul is left;

we humbly think that there still are hearts.

Michel de Montaigne

“You ask me why I loved him,”

Montaigne says.

“I don’t know.

All I can say is

" parce que c’était lui, parce que c’était moi.”

Because it was he, because it was I.

~~

Love to his soul gave eyes;

he knew things are not as they seem.

The dream is his real life;

the world around him is the dream.

~~

Federico García Lorca

Every song

is the remains
of love.

Every light
the remains
of time.
A knot
of time.

And every sigh
the remains
of a cry.

Guido Cavalcanti

‘Era in penser d’amor quand’ I’ trovai’
Deep in thoughts of love, I came

On two young maids,
One sang: ‘It rains
On us, the joy of love.’

Their faces were so calm and sweet,
With modesty and courtesy,
I said to them: ‘You hold the key
Of all virtue and nobility.
Ah, young maids, do not scorn me
Because of the wound that I carry,
My heart has been dead inside me
Since I left Toulouse.’

They turned their gaze towards me so
They might see how I was wounded
And how a spirit born of sorrow
From my wound’s deep centre issued.
When they saw me so destroyed,
One of them smiled and said:
‘See how this man is conquered
By the power of love.’

The other filled with mercy, pity,
Made for joy, in Love’s likeness,
Said: ‘Your heart’s wound I see
Came from eyes of such excess,
Such power, they left within,

a brightness-I cannot endure:
Tell me if you recall
Those eyes in you.’


To this harsh and fearful question
That the young maid asked of me,
I said: ‘In Toulouse I remember
There appeared an elegant lady,
Whom Love called la Mandetta: she
Struck me so fiercely, suddenly
To death, with her eyes, inwardly,
Through and through.’

She who had laughed at me before
Now replied most courteously:
‘She, who set herself with Love’s power
In your heart, gazed so fixedly
Into and through your eyes, that she
Made Love, himself, appear there.
If it’s deeply that you suffer
Turn to Love.’

Go to Toulouse, my little ballad,
Enter the Gilded Church there quietly,
Ask of some lovely lady, clearly,
To take you, out of courtesy,
To her of whom I told you fully:
And if you are received,
Say to her softly: ‘See,
For mercy I come to you.’

Joseph Conrad

...and try as I may for the success of this yarn I am missing innumerable shades--they were so fine, so difficult to render in colourless words.

-- Lord Jim

Hafiz

I have a thousand brilliant lies

For the question:
How are you?
I have a thousand brilliant lies

For the question:
What is God?
If you think that the Truth can be known

From words,
If you think that the Sun and the Ocean
Can pass through that tiny opening

Called the mouth,
O someone should start laughing!

Someone should start wildly Laughing –

Now!

wisdom of the idiots

One day Dhu-1-Nun reached a canal, where he performed his ablutions. He saw a beautiful palace situated close to the bank of the canal, on the balcony of which stood a very beautiful woman. Dhu-l-Nun, asked her to speak to him. She said, 'When I saw you at a distance, I felt you were a madman; when you came closer, I saw you were a learned man; when you came closer still I considered you to be an enlightened soul. But now you have spoken to me I consider you none of these. "
Dhu-l-Nun. Asked her why she felt so. She replied, if you were mad, you would not perform ablutions; if you were learned, you would not look at me; if you were enlightened, you would cast your glance at God and none besides.'
Saying this, she disappeared.

O You who are so unbearably beautiful

Whose beloved are You?" I asked.

"My own," He replied;

"For I am one and one alone-

Love, lover, beloved, mirror, beauty, eye!"

~Iraqi

Matthew Arnold

Longing
Come to me in my dreams, and then

By day I shall be well again.

For then the night will more than pay

The hopeless longing of the day.
Come, as thou cam'st a thousand times,

A messenger from radiant climes,

And smile on thy new world, and be

As kind to others as to me.
Or, as thou never cam'st in sooth,

Come now, and let me dream it truth.

And part my hair, and kiss my brow,

And say - My love! why sufferest thou?
Come to me in my dreams, and then

By day I shall be well again.

For then the night will more than pay

The hopeless longing of the day.

Thomas Mann

They sang their mysterious duo, sang

of their nameless hope, their death-

in-love, their union unending, lost

forever in the embrace of night’s

magic kingdom. O sweet night,

everlasting night of love! Land of

blessedness whose frontiers are

infinite!

~Tristan

I said,
“O sweet Beloved,
you are the refuge of my soul.”
He said, “If you belong to me,
don’t talk of your own soul.”
I said, “Why do you cut me
with your sharp words?”
He said, “My words wouldn’t hurt you,
if you weren’t in love with yourself.”
Rumi.

George Herbert

The Temper. (I)
HOw should I praise thee, Lord! how should my rymes
Gladly engrave thy love in steel,
If what my soul doth feel sometimes,
My soul might ever feel!
Although there were some fortie heav’ns, or more,
Sometimes I peere above them all;
Sometimes I hardly reach a score,
Sometimes to hell I fall.
O rack me not to such a vast extent;
Those distances belong to thee:
The world’s too little for thy tent,
A grave too big for me.
Wilt thou meet arms with man, that thou dost stretch
A crumme of dust from heav’n to hell?
Will great God measure with a wretch?
Shall he thy stature spell?
O let me, when thy roof my soul hath hid,
O let me roost and nestle there:
Then of a sinner thou art rid,
And I of hope and fear.
Yet take thy way; for sure thy way is best:
Stretch or contract me, thy poore debter:
This is but tuning of my breast,
To make the musick better.
Whether I flie with angels, fall with dust,
Thy hands made both, and I am there:
Thy power and love, my love and trust
Make one place ev’ry where.

Do not beguile my heart,
Because thou art
My power and wisdom. Put me not to shame,
Because I am
Thy clay that weeps, thy dust that calls.

~George Herbert

William Shakespeare

O Never say that I was false of heart,
Though absence seem'd my flame to qualify!
As easy might I from myself depart,
As from my soul, which in thy breast doth lie:
That is my home of love; if I have ranged,
Like him that travels I return again,
Just to the time, not with the time exchanged,
So that myself bring water for my stain.
Never believe, though in my nature reign'd
All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,
That it could so prepost'rously be stain'd,
To leave for nothing all thy sum of good:
...For nothing this wide Universe I call,
...Save thou, my Rose; in it thou art my all.

'The Way of the Sufi' Idries Shah

Once, when Bishr was a Sufi disciple still dependent entirely upon the comfort of men, he was on the Island of Abadan. There he came across a most unfortunate man. He was suffering from leprosy, was blind, and lay on the ground with nobody near him. Bishr went to him and raised his head on his knees, speaking some words of reassurance and humanity, feeling sorrow and compassion. The leper then spoke out, saying: 'What stranger comes here, to stand between me and my Lord? With or without my body, I have my love for Him.' Bishr recounts that this lesson had remained with him throughout his days.
Mashghul says: 'This story can only be understood by those who realize how the leper was preventing Bishr from indulging his own sentimentality and ruining himself, through being turned into what humanity calls a "good man". "Good" is what you do voluntarily, and not in furtherance of an appetite for indulgence taught by others in the name of humanity.'
~Bishr Ibn El-Harith

To ---- Percy Bysshe Shelley

One word is too often profaned
For me to profane it,
One feeling too falsely disdained
For thee to disdain it;
One hope is too like despair
For prudence to smother,
And pity from thee more dear
Than that from another.
I can give not what men call love,
But wilt thou accept not
The worship the heart lifts above
And the Heavens reject not,—
The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow?

La Amour...

What is love?"

"The total absence of fear," said the Master.

"What is it we fear?"

"Love," said the Master

wisdom of the idiots

Mula came upon a frowning man walking along the road to town. “What’s wrong?” he asked. The man held up a tattered bag and moaned, “All that I own in this wide world barely fills this miserable, wretched sack.”
“Too bad,” said Mula, and with that, he snatched the bag from the man’s hands and ran down the road with it.
Having lost everything, the man burst into tears and, more miserable than before, continued walking. Meanwhile, Mula quickly ran around the bend and placed the man’s sack in the middle of the road where he would have to come upon it.
When the man saw his bag sitting in the road before him, he laughed with joy, and shouted, “My sack! I thought I’d lost you!”
Watching through the bushes, Mula chuckled. “Well, that’s one way to make someone happy!”

Psychology Today-Idries Shah

SEE WHAT I MEAN?

Nasrudin was throwing handfuls of crumbs around his house.
"What are you doing?" someone asked him.
"Keeping the tigers away."
"But there are no tigers in these parts."
"That's right. Effective, isn't it?

Pablo Neruda

"So That You Will Hear Me"

So that you will hear me

my words

sometimes grow thin

as the tracks of the gulls on the beaches.

Necklace, drunken bell

for your hands smooth as grapes.

And I watch my words from a long way off.

They are more yours than mine.

They climb on my old suffering like ivy.

It climbs the same way on damp walls.

You are to blame for this cruel sport.

They are fleeing from my dark lair.

You fill everything, you fill everything.

Before you they peopled the solitude that you occupy,

and they are more used to my sadness than you are.

Now I want them to say what I want to say to you

to make you hear as I want you to hear me.

The wind of anguish still hauls on them as usual.

Sometimes hurricanes of dreams still knock them over.

You listen to other voices in my painful voice.

Lament of old mouths, blood of old supplications.

Love me, companion. Don't forsake me.

Follow me.Follow me, companion, on this wave of anguish.

But my words become stained with your love.

You occupy everything, you occupy everything.

I am making them into an endless necklace

for your white hands, smooth as grapes.

Faiz Ahmed Faiz

Before you came(translated by Agha Shahid Ali)

Before you came,
things were as they should be:
the sky was the dead-end of sight,
the road was just a road,wine merely wine.

Now everything is like my heart,
a colour at the edge of blood:
the grey of your absence,the colour of poison,of thorns,
the gold when we meet,the season ablaze,
the yellow of autumn,the red of flowers,of flames,
and the black when you cover the earth
with the coal of dead fires.


And the sky, the road, the glass of wine?
The sky is a shirt wet with tears,
the road a vein about to break,
and the glass of wine a mirror in which
the sky, the road, the world keep changing.


Don't leave now that you're here-
Stay.So the world may become like itself again:
so the sky may be the sky,
the road a road,
and the glass of wine not a mirror, just a glass of wine!

Blaise Pascal

Le coeur a ses raisons, que la raison ne connaît point. On le sent en mille choses. C'est le cœur qui sent Dieu, et non la raison. Voilà ce que c'est que la foi parfaite, Dieu sensible au cœur.

Translation: The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know. We feel it in a thousand things. It is the heart which experiences God, and not the reason. This, then, is faith: God felt by the heart, not by the reason.

Khawaja Ghulam Farid

Of B and C what do i know,

Made powerless by A,sir?

Close up those dusty legal texts

Just teach me love,I Pray,Sir!

"Tillägnan" (Dedication)- Karin Boye

Allt, allt jag ägdevar mer ditt än mitt.
Allt jag vackrast villevar ditt, ditt, ditt.
(Everything, everything I owned was more yours than mine.
All beautiful things I wanted were yours, yours, yours.)
Högt med dig jag taladevad ingen i världen vet.
På ändlösa vägarvar du min ensamhet.
(I spoke aloud with you what nobody in the world knows.
On endless roads you were my loneliness.)
Låg jag vaken om nattenoch tänkte ingenting,andades, kände jag dig, dig.
Du var runtomkring.
(If I lay awake at night and thought of nothing,I breathed, felt you, you.
You were all around me.)
Livlöst är livet,där inte du är kvar.V
ärlden är ett väldigt skal,som ingen kärna har.
(Lifeless is life,where you no longer remain.
The world is a huge shell,that has no core.)

Carmina Burana

Respondit Caritas;
"homo, quid dubitas,
quid me sollicitas?
non sum quod usitasnec in euro nec in austro,
nec in foro nec in claustro,
nec in bysso nec in cuculla,
nec in bello nec in bulla.
de Iericho sum veniens,
ploro cum sauciato,
quem duplex Levi transiensnon astitit grabato."


Then Love replied,
"Man, wherefore didst thou doubt?
Not where thou wast wont to find
My dwelling in the southern wind;
Not in court and not in cloister,
Not in casque nor yet in cowl,
Not in battle nor in Bull,
But on the road from Jericho
I come with a wounded man."

No. 131, "Dic, Christi veritas", line 13; translation from Helen Waddell Mediaeval Latin Lyrics ([1929] 1933) p. 195.

Dulcissime (Sweetest one)
Dulcissime, (Sweetest one! Ah! )
totam tibi subdo me! (I give myself to you totally! )

Rumi!

The lute began....

My heart snapped its chains.

Something sang from the strings

"Wounded,crazy one.....COME!"

Rainer Maria Rilke

The Lovers

See how in their veins all becomes spirit:
into each other they mature and grow.
Like axles, their forms tremblingly orbit,
round which it whirls, bewitching and aglow.
Thirsters, and they receive drink,
watchers, and see: they receive sight.
Let them into one another sink
so as to endure each other outright.