The Conference of the Birds (Penguin)

by Farid al-Din Attar

  “Great sheikh, I simply spin coarse cotton thread;

  I sell this and am satisfied to get

  Two grains of silver – though I never yet

  Held both these grains together in my palm,

  But one in either hand. I fear the harm

  That follows from the clink of coin on coin,

  The sleepless nights when sums of money join.”

  The worldly man’s embroiled in bloody cares,

  Laying a hundred thousand different snares

  Until unlawfully he gets his gold,

  And promptly dies! Before his body’s cold,

  The eager heir has claimed his property,

  His legal right to strife and misery.

  You sell the Simorgh for this gold; its light

  Has made your heart a candle in the night!

  We seek the Way of perfect Unity,

  Where no one counts his own prosperity;

  But you are like an ant that’s led astray

  Too easily from our strict, narrow Way –

  lines 2133–49

  The strait path offers no deceitful smiles;

  What living creature can endure its trials?

  The hermit who listened to a bird

  A man divinely blessed filled all his days

  For twice two hundred years with sacred praise.

  He lived alone where no man ever trod

  And, hidden by Truth’s veil, conversed with God

  (His one companion was the Lord, and He

  Makes other friends a useless luxury).

  His garden had a tree – this tree a guest;

  For there a lovely bird had built its nest.

  Such sweetly trilling songs poured from its throat,

  A hundred secrets lurked in every note!

  Charmed by this liquid voice the hermit found

  Companionship in its beguiling sound.

  God called the prophet of that time and said:

  “We must reproach this man: ‘The life you’ve led

  Has day and night been given up to prayer;

  For years you burnt with love – and now you dare

  To sell Me for the singing of a bird,

  The willing dupe of that fine voice you heard!

  I’ve bought and cared for you – your negligence

  Has cheaply sold me off as recompense:

  I pay the price for you, you auction Me,

  Is this your meaning for “fidelity”?

  I am the one Companion you should keep,

  Not some quick bargain to be marked down “cheap”’.”’

  An ostentatious bird

  Another bird declared: ‘My happiness

  Comes from the splendid things which I possess:

  My palace walls inlaid with gold excite

  Astonishment in all who see the sight.

  They are a world of joy to me – how could

  lines 2150–65

  I wrench my heart from this surpassing good?

  There I am king; all bow to my commands –

  Shall I court ruin in the desert sands?

  Shall I give up this realm, and live without

  My certain glory in a world of doubt?

  What rational mind would give up paradise

  For wanderings filled with pain and sacrifice?’

  The hoopoe answers him

  The hoopoe said: ‘Ungrateful wretch! Are you

  A dog that you should need a kennel too?

  This world’s a kennel’s filthy murk at best;

  Your palace is a kennel with the rest.

  If it seems paradise, at your last breath

  You’ll know it is your dungeon after death.

  There’d be no harm in palaces like yours,

  Did not the thought of death beat at our doors.

  A king who built a splendid palace

  A king who loved his own magnificence

  Once built a palace and spared no expense.

  When this celestial building had been raised,

  The gorgeous carpets and its splendour dazed

  The crowd that pressed around – a servant flung

  Trays heaped with money to the scrabbling throng.

  The king now summoned all his wisest friends

  And said: “What do I lack? Who recommends

  Improvements to my court?” “We must agree,”

  They said, “no man could now or ever see,

  In all the earth, a palace built like this.”

  An old ascetic spoke. “One thing’s amiss,”

  He said; “there’s one particular you lack.

  This noble structure has a nasty crack

  (Though if it weren’t for that it would suffice

  To be the heavenly court of paradise).”

  The king replied: “What crack? Where is it? Where?

  lines 2166–79

  If you’ve come here for trouble, then take care!”

  The man said: “Lord, it is the truth I tell –

  And through that crack will enter Azra’el.*

  It may be you can block it, but if not,

  Then throne and palace are not worth a jot!

  Your palace now seems like some heavenly prize,

  But death will make it ugly to your eyes;

  Nothing remains for ever and you know –

  Although you live here now- that this is so.

  Don’t pride yourself on things that cannot last;

  Don’t gallop your high-stepping horse so fast.

  If one like me is left to indicate

  Your faults to you, I pity your sad fate.”

  A merchant gives a party

  To gratify his busy self-esteem,

  A merchant built a mansion like a dream,

  And when the preparations were all done,

  He regally invited everyone

  To an enormous entertainment there,

  At which they’d feast and dutifully stare.

  But running self-importantly around,

  He met a begging fool, who stood his ground

  And mocked the merchant’s diligence. “My lord,”

  He said, “I’m desolate (O, rest assured!)

  That I can’t come and drink your health, but I’m

  So busy that I really haven’t time –

  You will forgive me?” and he gave a grin.

  “Of course,” the merchant answered, taken in.

  The spider

  You’ve seen an active spider work – he seems

  To spend his life in self-communing dreams;

  In fact the web he spins is evidence

  lines 2180–97

  That he’s endowed with some far-sighted sense.

  He drapes a corner with his cunning snare

  And waits until a fly’s entangled there,

  Then dashes out and sucks the meagre blood

  Of his bewildered, buzzing, dying food.

  He’ll dry the carcass then, and live off it

  For days, consuming bit by tasty bit –

  Until the owner of the house one day

  Will reach up casually to knock away

  The cunning spider’s home – and with her broom

  She clears both fly and spider from the room.

  Such is the world, and one who feeds there is

  A fly trapped by that spider’s subtleties;

  If all the world is yours, it will pass by

  As swiftly as the blinking of an eye;

  And though you boast of kings and patronage,

  You are a child, an actor on a stage.

  Don’t seek for wealth unless you are a fool;

  A herd of cows is all that you can rule!

  Whoever lives for banners, drums and glory

  Is dead; the dervish understands this story

  And calls it windy noise–winds vainly flap

  The banners, hollowly the brave drums tap.

  Don’t gallop on the horse of vanity;

  Don’t pride your
self on your nobility.

  They skin the leopard for his splendid pelt;

  They’ll flay you too before your nose has smelt

  A whiff of danger. When your life’s made plain,

  Which will be better, death or chastening pain?

  You cannot hold your head up then – obey!

  How long must you persist in childish play?

  Either give up your wealth or lay aside

  The rash pretensions of your crazy pride.

  Your palace and your gardens! They’re your gaol,

  The dungeon where your ruined soul will wail,

  Forsake this dusty pride, know what it’s worth;

  lines 2198–2213

  Give up your restless pacing of the earth.

  To see the Way, look with the eyes of thought;

  Set out on it and glimpse the heavenly court –

  And when you reach that souls’ asylum, then

  Its glory will blot out the world of men.

  The restless fool and the dervish

  A fool dashed onward at a reckless pace

  Till in the desert he came face to face

  With one who wore the ragged dervish cloak,

  And asked: “What is your work?” The dervish spoke:

  “Poor shallow wretch, can you not see I faint

  With this strict pressure of the world’s constraint?”

  “Constraint? That can’t be right,” the man replied;

  “The empty desert stretches far and wide.”

  The dervish said: “If there is no strict Way,

  How has it led you to me here today?”

  A myriad promises beguile your mind,

  But flames of greed are all that you can find.

  What are such flames? Tread down the world’s desire,

  And like a lion shun this raging fire.

  Accomplish this, and you will find your heart;

  There waits your palace, pure in every part.

  Fire blocks the path, the goal is long delayed –

  Your heart’s a captive and your soul’s afraid,

  But in the midst of such an enterprise

  You will escape this universe of lies.

  When worldly pleasures cloy, prepare to die –

  The world gives neither name nor truth, pass by!

  The more you see of it the less you see,

  How often must I warn you to break free?

  Seeing the world

  A mourner following a coffin cried:

  “You hardly saw the world, and yet you’ve died.”

  lines 2214–29

  A fool remarked: “Such noise! You’d think that he

  Had seen the world himself repeatedly!”

  If you would take the world with you, you must

  Descend with all the world unseen to dust;

  You rush to savour life, and so life goes

  While you ignore the balm for all its woes;

  Until the Self is sacrificed your soul

  Is lost in filth, divided from its goal.

  A perfumed wood was burning, and its scent

  Made someone sigh with somnolent content.

  One said to him: “Your sigh means ecstasy;

  Think of the wood, whose sigh means misery”.’

  A bird who cannot leave his beloved

  ‘Great hoopoe,’ said another bird, ‘my love

  Has loaded me with chains, I cannot move.

  This bandit, Love, confronted me and stole

  My intellect, my heart, my inmost soul –

  The image of her face is like a thief

  Who fires the harvest and leaves only grief.

  Without her I endure the pangs of hell,

  Raving and cursing like an infidel;

  How can I travel when my heart must stay

  Lapped here in blood? And on that weary Way,

  How many empty valleys lie ahead,

  How many horrors wait for us? I dread

  One moment absent from her lovely face;

  How could I seek the Way and leave this place?

  My pain exceeds all cure or remedy;

  I’ve passed beyond both faith and blasphemy –

  My blasphemy and faith are love for her;

  My soul is her abject idolater –

  And though companionless I weep and groan,

  My friend is sorrow; I am not alone.

  My love has brought me countless miseries,

  lines 2230–47

  But in her hair lie countless mysteries;

  Without her face, blood chokes me, I am drowned,

  I’m dust blown aimlessly across the ground.

  Believe me, everything I say is true –

  This is my state; now tell me what to do.’

  The hoopoe answers him

  The hoopoe said: ‘You are the prisoner of

  Appearances, a superficial love;

  This love is not divine; it is mere greed

  For flesh – an animal, instinctive need.

  To love what is deficient, trapped in time,

  Is more than foolishness, it is a crime –

  And blasphemous the struggle to evade

  That perfect beauty which can never fade.

  You would compare a face of blood and bile

  To the full moon – yet what could be more vile

  In all the world than that same face when blood

  And bile are gone? – it is no more than mud.

  This is the fleshly beauty you adore;

  This is its being, this and nothing more.

  How long then will you seek for beauty here?

  Seek the unseen, and beauty will appear.

  When that last veil is lifted neither men

  Nor all their glory will be seen again,

  The universe will fade – this mighty show

  In all its majesty and pomp will go,

  And those who-loved appearances will prove

  Each other’s enemies and forfeit love,

  While those who loved the absent, unseen Friend

  Will enter that pure love which knows no end.

  Shebli and a man whose friend had died

  Once Shebli saw a poor wretch weeping. “Why

  These tears?” the sheikh inquired. “What makes you cry?”

  He said: “O sheikh, I had a friend whose face

  lines 2248–64

  Refreshed my soul with its young, candid grace –

  But yesterday he died; since then I’m dead,

  There’s nothing that could dry the tears I shed.”

  The sheikh replied: “And is that all you miss?

  Don’t grieve, my friend, you’re worth much more than this.

  Choose now another friend who cannot die –

  For His death you will never have to cry.

  The friend from whom, through death, we must soon part

  Brings only sorrow to the baffled heart;

  Whoever loves the world’s bright surfaces

  Endures in love a hundred miseries;

  Too soon the surface flees his groping hand,

  And sorrow comes which no man can withstand.”

  A merchant who sold his favourite slave

  There was a merchant once who had a slave

  As sweet as sugar how did he behave?

  He sold that girl beyond comparison –

  And O, how he regretted what he’d done

  He offered her new master heaps of gold

  And would have paid her price a thousandfold;

  His heart4n flames, his poor head in a whirl,

  He begged her owner to resell the girl.

  But he was adamant and would not sell;

  The merchant paced the street, his mind in hell,

  And groaned: “I cannot bear this searing pain

  But anyone who gives his love for gain,

  Who stitches tight the eyes of common-sense

  Deserves as much for his improvidence –

  To think that on
that fatal market-day

  I tricked myself and gave the best away.”

  Your breaths are jewels, each atom is a guide

  To lead you to the Truth, and glorified

  From head to foot with His great wealth you stand;

  O, if you could entirely understand

  Your absence from Him, then you would not wait

  lines 2265–82

  Inured by patience to your wretched fate –

  God nourished you in love and holy pride,

  But ignorance detains you from His side.

  A king and his greyhound

  A royal hunt swept out across the plain.

  The monarch called for someone in his train

  To bring a greyhound, and the handler brought

  A dark, sleek dog, intelligent, well-taught;

  A jewelled gold collar sparkled at its throat,

  Its back was covered by a satin coat –

  Gold anklets clasped its paws; its leash was made

  Of silk threads twisted in a glistening braid.

  The king thought him a dog who’d understand,

  And took the silk leash in his royal hand;

  The dog ran just behind his lord, then found

  A piece of bone abandoned on the ground –

  He stooped to sniff, and when the king saw why,

  A glance of fury flashed out from his eye.

  “When you’re with me,” he said, “your sovereign king,

  How dare you look at any other thing?”

  He snapped the leash and to his handler cried:

  “Let this ill-mannered brute roam far and wide.

  He’s mine no more – better for him if he

  Had swallowed pins than found such liberty!”

  The handler stared and tried to remonstrate:

  “The dog, my lord, deserves an outcast’s fate;

  But we should keep the satin and the gold.”

  The king said: “No, do just as you are told;

  Drive him, exactly as he is, away –

  And when he comes back to himself some day,

  He’ll see the riches that he bears and know

  That he was mine, a king’s, but long ago.”

  And you, who had a king once as your friend,

  And lost Him through your negligence, attend:

  lines 2283–98

  Give yourself wholly to the love of Truth;

  Drink with this dragon like a reckless youth –

  Now is the dragon’s time – the lover must

  Submit and see his throat’s blood stain the dust;

  What terrifies the human soul’s so slight –

  An ant at most – in this vast dragon’s sight;

  His lovers’ thirst will not be quenched till they