My rosy-checked Cup-bearer!, The voice of spring is the
voice of life!
But the spring lasts not for ever; So bring me the cup
that tears all veils—
The wine that brightens life—The wine that intoxicates
the world—
The wine in which flows, The music of everlasting
life,
The wine that reveals eternity’s secret.
Unveil the secrets, O Saqi.
Look! The world has changed apace!, New are the songs,
and new is the music;
The West’s magic has dissolved; The West’s magicians
are bewildered;
Old politics has lost its game; The world is tired of
kings;
Gone are the days of the rich; Gone is the jugglery of
old;
Awake is China’s sleeping giant; The Himalayas’
torrents are unleashed;
Sinai is riven; Moses awaits the light divine.
The Muslim says that God is One, But his heart is
Still a heathen:
Culture, sufism, rites and rthetoric, All adore non-
Arab idols;
The truth was lost in trifles, And the nation was lost
in conventions.
The speaker’s rhetoric is enchanting, But is devoid of
passion;
It is clothed in logic neat, But lost in a maze of
words;
The sufi, unique in the love of truth, Unique in the
love of God,
Was lost in un-Islamic thought; Was lost in the
hierarchic quest;
The fire of love is extinguished, And a Muslim is a
heap of ashes.
O Saqi! Give me the old wine again! Let the potent cup go round!
Let me soar on the wings of love; Make my dust bright-pinioned;
Make wisdom free; And make the young guide the old;
Thou it is that nourishest. this nation; Thou it is that canst sustain it;
Urge them to
move, to stir; Give them Ali’s heart;
give them Siddiq’s passion;
Let the same
old love pierce their hearts; Awaken in them a burning zeal;
Let the stars
throw down their spears, And let the earth’s dwellers tremble—
Give the young
a passion that consumes; Give them my vision, my love of God;
Free my boat from
the whirlpool’s grip, And make it move forward-,
Reveal to me
the secrets of life, For thou knowest them all;
The treasures of a fakir like me, Are suffused,
unsleeping eyes,
And secret
yearnings of the heart-, My anguished sighs at night,
My solitude in
the world of men, My hopes and my fears,
My quest
untiring, My nature an arena of thought—
A mirror of the
world.
My heart a
battlefield of life, With armies of suspicion,
And bastions of
certitude; With these treasures I am
More rich than
the richest of all.
Let the young join my throng, And let them find an
anchor of hope.
The sea of life
has its ebb and flow-, In every atom’s heart is the pulse of life;
It manifests
itself in the body, As a flame conceals a wave of smoke;
Contact with the
earth was harsh for it, But it liked the labour;
It is in
motion, and not in motion; Tired of the elements’ shackles;
A unity,
imprisoned by plurality; But always unique, unequalled.
It has made this dome of myriad glass; It has carved
this pantheon.
It does not
repeat its craft— For thou art not me, and I am not thou;
It has created
the world of men, And remains in solitude,
Its brightness
is seen in the stars, And in the lustre of pearls-,
To it belong
the wildernesses,
The flowers and the thorns; Mountains sometimes are
shaken by its might;
It captures
angels and nymphs; It makes the eagle pounce on a prey,
And leave a
blood-stained body.
Every atom
throbs with life; Rest is an illusion;
Life’s journey
pauses not, For every moment is a new glory;
Life, thou
thinkest, is a mystery; Life is a delight in eternal flight;
Life has seen
many ups and downs; It loves a journey, not a goal.
Movement is
life’s being; Movement is truth, pause is a mirage.
Life’ enjoyment
is in perils, In facing ups and downs; In the world beyond
Life stalked
for death, But the impulse to procreate
Peopled the
world of man and beast.
Flowers blossomed and dropped From this tree of life.
Fools think
life is ephemeral; Life renews itself for ever—
Moving fast as
a flash, Moving to eternity in a breath;
Time, a chain
of days and nights, Is the ebb and flow of breath.
This flow of
breath is like a sword, Selfhood is its sharpness;
Selfhood is the
secret of life; It is the world’s awakening,
Selfhood is solitary, absorbed, An ocean enclosed in a
drop;
It shines in
light and in darkness, Existent in, but away from, thee and me.
The dawn of
life behind it, eternity before, It has no frontiers before, no frontiers
behind.
Afloat on the river of time, Bearing the buffets of
the waves,
Changing the
course of its quest, Shifting its glance from time to time;
For it a hill
is a grain of sand, Mountains are shattered by its blows;
A journey is
its beginning and end, And this is the secret of its being.
It is the moon’s beam, the spark in the flint,
Colourless itself, though infused with colours,
No concern has
it with the calculus of space, With linear time’s limits, with the finitude of
life.
It manifested
itself in man’s essence of dust, After an eternity of a strife to be born.
It is in thy
heart that Selfhood has an abode, As heaven has its abode in the cornea of thy
eye.
To one who
guards his Selfhood, The living that demeans it, is poison;
He accepts only
a living, That keeps his self- esteem;
Keep away from
royal pomp, Keep thy Selfhood free;
Thou shouldst
bow in prayer, Not bow to a human being.
This myriad-coloured world, Under the sentence of
death,
This world of
sight and sound, I Where life means eating and drinking,
Is Selfhood’s
initial stage; It is not thy abode, O traveller!
This dust-bowl is not the source of thy fire; The
world is for thee, not thou for the world.
Demolish this
illusion of’ time and space; Selfhood is the Tiger of God, the world is its
prey;
The earth is
its prey, the heavens are its prey; Other worlds there are, still awaiting
birth,
The earth-born
are not the centre of all life; They all await thy assault,
Thy cataclysmic
thought and deed; Days and nights revolve,
To reveal thy
Selfhood to thee; Thou art the architect of the world.
Words fail to
convey the truth; Truth is the mirror, words its shade;
Though the
breath is a burning flame, The flame has limited bounds.
‘If now I soar
any farther, The vision will sear my wings.’