Original content

English translation

The king related the account of the sick one and her illness, then seated the physician before the patient. He looked at the color of her face, her pulse, and the urine flask, and heard both her symptoms and their causes. He said, “Every remedy they have used has not restored the building but destroyed it. They were unaware of the inward state; I seek refuge in God from what they fabricate.” He saw the suffering, and what was hidden was disclosed to him, but he concealed it and did not tell the sultan. Her suffering was not from yellow bile or black bile; the smell of every wood is known from its smoke. From her lament he saw that she was sick at heart: the body was well, but she was caught by the heart. Love is manifest from the heart’s lament; there is no sickness like sickness of the heart. The lover’s malady is apart from other maladies; love is the astrolabe of God’s mysteries. Whether love is from this side or from that side, in the end it leads us to that side. Whatever I say in explanation and description of love, when I come to love I am ashamed of it. Although the tongue’s commentary illuminates, tongueless love is clearer. When the pen hurried in writing, when it came to love the pen split itself. Reason, in explaining it, lay like a donkey in mud; love itself spoke the explanation of love and loving. The sun is the proof of the sun; if you need proof, do not turn your face from it. If shadow gives a sign of it, the sun gives soul-light at every moment. Shadow brings you sleep like evening tales; when the sun rises, the moon is split. There is nothing more strange in the world than the sun; the sun of the soul is everlasting, for it has no yesterday. Although the outward sun is single, one can still picture its likeness. The sun of the soul, which is beyond the ether, has no likeness in mind or outside. Where is there room in imagination for his essence, so that his like might enter imagination? When the discourse reached the face of Shams al-Din, the sun of the fourth heaven drew in its head. Since his name has come, it is necessary to explain a hint of his bounties. At this breath my soul has seized the hem of my robe; it has found the scent of Joseph’s shirt, saying: “For the sake of the right of years of companionship, tell again something of those happy states, so that earth and heaven may laugh and reason, spirit, and sight may become a hundredfold.” “Do not impose this on me, for I am annihilated in annihilation; my understandings are exhausted, so I cannot count the praise. Whatever one not fully sober says, whether from affectation or boastfulness, is unfitting.” What shall I say? Not one vein of mine is sober enough to describe that Friend who has no peer. Leave the explanation of this separation and this bloody grief for another time. He said, “Feed me, for I am hungry; hurry, for time is a cutting sword.” The Sufi is the son of the moment, friend; saying “tomorrow” is not among the conditions of the Path. Are you perhaps not a Sufi man yourself? From treating the present as deferred credit, nonbeing arises. I said to him, “The Friend’s secret is better veiled; listen for it yourself within the story. It is better that the secret of beloveds be told in the discourse of others.” He said, “Tell it revealed and naked, without concealment; do not put me off, you meddlesome one. Lift the veil and speak nakedly, for I do not sleep with the idol while wearing a shirt.” I said, “If he becomes naked in open sight, neither you, nor your embrace, nor your middle will remain. Desire, but desire in measure; a straw cannot bear a mountain. A sun by which this world was lit, if it came a little nearer, would burn everything. Do not seek sedition, turmoil, and bloodshed; say no more than this of Shams of Tabriz.” “This has no end; speak from the beginning. Go, retell this whole story.”