Stabbing the Eye
At the hands of eye and heart my screams aloud
Whatsoever the eye beholds the heart remembers time and time
Crafting a dagger its sharpened tip from steal [1]
Stabbing the eye so that the heart is finally freed
Jubilee are those with no love in their hearts [2]
For dear Beloved in their hearts have no love
Whomsoever is a lover fears nothing for their lives
The lover fears no shackles and dungeons at all
The years and the moons got used to Its suffering
Since even their own pain they could not heal [3]
The lover’s heart is a hungry wolf ferocious [4]
The wolf fears not the shepherd’s “hey hey”
O! Tulip farmers, plan no more tulips ever [5]
O! Gardeners, pull away both hands from flowers
If the promise of the flowers is what I have seen
Uproot the flowers and instead plant the thorn seeds
[1] I think this is one the most
beautiful poems of Sufism.
A man so desperate not to look upon this life anymore, a man so pushed
to free
his heart is willing to make a dagger and kill his own eyes. The
elegance of
the expression the fierce emotional passion to do away with this world
is
superb.
[2] “Jubilee are those…” is the
signature phrase of Baba
Tahir. In this case I suspect in a sarcastic way he sees the un-lovers
as the
real happy people. They love no one and in their heart there is no love
for
Beloved either. Therefore their lives made banal, no pain and
suffering. But he
teaches a remarkable lesson: If you do not love any person e.g. a woman
or a
child, then there is no love of Beloved in your heart either. There is
no such
a person, recluse in a cave worshiping and meditating and only loves
Allah and
no one in this life he cares for. This way it is a fake. The real lover
of
Beloved is an intense passionate lover of his woman, his children and
all
around him.
[3] “The years and the moons” could
have many meanings. It
could mean, the lovers from previous verse, got used to the heartache
of loving
for years and years. Or “The years” mean the old wise people and “The
moon”
mean a splendid fine person, to mean that old wise sages and the fine
people
also got used to this pain and could not heal themselves.
[4] Baba Tahir tells us that a lover
like a wolf is not
afraid of the noises of a shepherd i.e. there is nothing that easily
scares him
away his love for Beloved. The shepherd could be a prison or war or
hunger or
illness or betrayal… Lover be brave.
[5] Flowers are the code word for “the
life of this world”.
This reference comes from the Koran [20:131]:
The Arabic word ‘Zahra’ means
either radiant splendor or
flower. The verse could read “the flower/blossom/blooming of the life
of this
world”. Why flower? Because it looks very pretty, you want to touch and
smell
it but very quickly it dies at your hands.
“Tulip Farmer” means a person
working this life for material
gain. The same for gardner.
Background: The beautiful
singer Cesario Evora.
©
2003-2002,
Dara Shayda
Calligraphy by Abbas Mostofi
Mamaleki
