Original content

English translation

He said, 'I am dropsical, the water draws me, although I know that the water also kills me.' No dropsical person runs away from water, even if it makes him dead and ruined two hundred times. Though my hand and belly swell, my love for water will not decrease. I say, when they ask about my belly, 'Would that the ocean were flowing inside me!' Let the leather bottle of my belly burst from the waves of water; if I die, my death is sweet. Wherever I see a running stream of water, I feel envy, wishing I were in its place. With hands like a tambourine and a belly like a drum, I beat the drum of love of water like a rose. If that Holy Spirit shed my blood, I will drink my blood drop by drop like the earth. Like the earth and like the embryo, I am a blood-drinker; ever since I became a lover, this is my business. At night I boil in the fire like a pot; from morning till night I drink blood like the sand. I repent that I devised a trick and fled from the desire of His wrath. Let Him direct His wrath against my ecstatic soul; He is the Festival of Sacrifice, and the lover is the sacrificial buffalo. Whether the ox sleeps or eats, it is nurtured for the festival and its slaughter. Deem me the ox of Moses, given life; every particle of mine is the resurrection of every free person. The ox of Moses was sacrificed, and its lowest part gave life to a slain man. That slain man leaped up from its touch, in reference to the command, 'Strike him with some part of it.' O my noble friends, slaughter this cow, if you desire the resurrection of the souls of vision. I died from the mineral state and became a plant; I died from the plant and rose to the animal. I died from the animal state and became a man; why then should I fear? When have I become less by dying? In the next onset I shall die from humanity, that I may soar and raise my head among the angels. And from the angel too I must escape from the stream; 'Everything is perishing except His Face.' Once more I shall be sacrificed from the angel; I shall become that which enters not into imagination. Then I shall become non-existence; non-existence, like an organ, says to me, 'Verily, unto Him we are returning.' Deem death to be that which is agreed upon by the community, that the Water of Life is hidden in darkness. Grow like a water-lily from this side of the stream; be, like the dropsical, greedy and seeking death. His death is water, and he is seeking water; he drinks, and God knows best what is right. O cold lover, wrapped in a shameful felt coat, who flees from the Beloved out of fear for his life! O shame of women, look at a hundred thousand souls clapping their hands toward the sword of His love! If you have seen the stream, pour the jug into the stream; how can water escape from the stream? When the water in the jug goes into the stream, it is merged in it and becomes the stream. Its attribute is annihilated, and its essence remains; henceforth it neither decreases nor becomes ugly. I have hung myself upon His palm-tree, as an excuse for having fled from Him.