Journey to Damascus
سفر به دمشق
ومن سفر فيه لم يربح سوى نفسه
Who travels in Him
will gain but oneself.¹
Ibn 'Arabi
'Mid the hills I call the fog,
"In this calmness show me road..."
But it only got more pale,
Shout mine has sunk in haze...
Snowy hills in mist forgot
What had been, and what had not...
I am walking slowly where? -
Where fog is the most blear, -
To the West, methinks; I hear
"To the Mountain of forty seers,
To Kaaba golden go..."
Then the calling in the snow
Lulled and downed...
"In the mist the seeker drowned,
In uncertainty got lost..."
Spoke to me the misty ghost;
Then as if I did submerge
In a somnólent surge...
Dervish I see on the carpet old
Woven long ago...
Dervish: Take a seat, I see, you hast
Queries in your eyes, but hark:
وإن شئت أن أنبئك فاسمع
وحصّل ما أشير به إليك
If you wish to get an indication, - hark!
And a sign for thee will come...²
Ibn 'Arabi
Me: He told me by the fog to go,
But ah, I do not know
Where it is...
Dervish:
پس رهی را که ندیده ستی تو هیچ
هین مَرو تنها زِ رَهبر سَر مَپیچ
If you have never seen the way, -
Turn not from guide, do not alone set out, nay!
Rumi, Masnavi 1:2950
Where petrified the night and stilled,
Into the mountain congealed...
The stone sculpture of the night -
A sacred tower and sign
Of God - the holy mount Qasioun.
Then dervish words in Farsi spake,
And carpet from the ground raised;
With fog we blent, became obscure,
Like fume illusive and unsure...
We sped in blackness hazy, we -
As if a dream within a dream...
Dervish: But listen to some counsels while
We cross the night:
أحك عن سهل بن عبد الله حكاية،
فقال إنه قال: علامة المتوكل ثلاث:
لا يسأل، ولا يرد، ولا يحبس
'Tis related that Sahl bin Abdullah spake:
There are three marks of Trust in God:
Do not ask, do not refuse, do not detain.
Related by Al-Qushayri
O the cloud, how, say,
You know where to carry rain?
- I submit to will of God,
Whereto He points - I flow...
Behold the birds of the heaven, that they
sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather
into barns; and your heavenly Father feedeth them.
Matthew 6:26
فالصوفيُّ كلّ خباياه في خزائن الله؛ لصدق
توكّله، وثقته بربّه، فالدنيا للصوفي كدار
الغربة: ليس فيها ادّخار، ولا له منها استكثار
The treasury of God is all what Sufi aspires to,
by his sincere trust in God, and faith...
The world for Sufi is like an outlandish dwelling:
There is nothing for him there to amass,
neither for him there any increase...
Umar Suhrawardi
The colours murky slowly lull,
From night - is only illusóry hull
In morning glow; Low
Are hovering we... Below
Are rocks and stony land,
The lakes of sand...
Damascus yet we have
Approached...
December 2019
1 Ibn 'Arabi, The Book of Journeys
كتاب الإسفار عن نتائج الأسفار
2 Ibn 'Arabi, The Book of Anqā of the West
كتاب عنقاء مغرب في ختم الأولياء وشمس المغرب
Al-Qushayri, The Epistle on Sufism
الرسالة القشيرية
Umar Suhrawardi, The Knowledge of the Spiritually Learned
عوارف المعارف
Translations from Arabic and Farsi
by Denis Bezmelnitsin
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