Original content

English translation

He said: I am dropsical — water draws me, Though I know that water will destroy me too. No dropsical man ever flees from water, Though it defeat and ruin him two hundred times. If my hand and belly swell, My love of water will not diminish. I would say, when they ask about my swelling: Would that an ocean were flowing within me! Let my skin split from the waves of water — If I die, my death is blessed. Wherever I see the water of a stream, Envy comes over me — would that I were in its place. My hand is like a tambourine, my belly like a drum — I beat the drum of love for water like a madman. If that Trustworthy Spirit spills my blood, I will drink my blood sip by sip, like the earth. Like the earth and like the fetus, I am a blood-drinker — Since I have become a lover, this is my nature. At night I boil in fire like a cauldron, From day to night I drink blood like sand. I repent that I stirred up cunning — That I fled from what His wrath desired. Let Him pour His wrath upon my intoxicated soul — The Feast of Sacrifice is His, and the lover is the buffalo. If the ox sleeps or eats anything, It is being fattened for the feast and the slaughter. Know me as the cow of Moses, O you who have given your soul — Each part of me is the resurrection of every free one. The cow of Moses was one that had been sacrificed — The least of its parts gave life to the slain. That slain one leaped from his place at its touch, At the command: "Strike him with part of it." O noble ones, slaughter this cow, If you desire the resurrection of the spirits of insight. I died from the mineral and became a plant, And I died from the plant and struck toward the animal. I died from the animal and became human — Then why should I fear? When have I diminished by dying? With another charge I shall die from humanness, So that I may raise wings and head among the angels. And from angelic nature too I must leap beyond — "Everything perishes except His Face." Once more I shall be sacrificed from angelic nature — I shall become that which enters not into imagination. Then I shall become non-existence; non-existence, like an organ, Says to me: "Verily, to Him we return." Know that the death agreed upon by the community Is the Water of Life hidden in darkness. Like the water-lily, go toward this side of the stream — Greedy and death-seeking like the dropsical man. His death is water and he seeks water — He drinks; and God knows best what is right. O frozen lover, shameful felt-cloth, Who flees from the Beloved out of fear for his life. Toward the sword of His love, O bearer of shame, Behold a hundred thousand souls clapping their hands. When you see a stream, pour the pitcher into the stream — When can water flee from the stream? When the water of the pitcher becomes one with the stream's water, It is obliterated in it, and the stream becomes it. Its attribute has perished and its essence remains — Henceforth it neither diminishes nor turns ugly. I have hung myself upon His palm tree, As excuse for having fled from Him.