The Conference of the Birds (Penguin)

by Farid al-Din Attar

  You cannot take your place among the brave.

  Love drives the wandering pilgrim on his quest;

  And where by day or night will he find rest?

  The devout slave

  A negro had a slave devout and wise

  Who at an early hour would wake and rise,

  Then pray until the sun came peeping through.

  His master said: “Wake me up early too,

  And we can pray together till the dawn.”

  The slave said: “Just before a baby’s born,

  Who tells the mother ‘Now your time draws near’?

  She knows it does – her pain has made it clear;

  If you have felt this pain you are awake –

  No other man can feel it for your sake.

  If someone has to rouse you every day,

  Then someone else instead of you should pray.”

  The man without this pain is not a man;

  May grief destroy the bragging charlatan!

  But one who is entangled in its spell

  Forgets all thoughts of heaven or of hell.

  A vision of heaven and hell

  Sheikh Bou Ali Tousi’s long pilgrimage

  (He was the wisest savant of his age)

  lines 3199–3217

  Conducted him so far that I know none

  Who could draw near to what this man has done.

  He said: “The wretches damned in hell will cry

  To those in paradise: ‘O, testify

  To us the nature of your happiness;

  Describe the sacred joys which you possess!’

  And they will say: ‘Ineffable delight

  Shines in the radiance of His face; its light

  Draws near us, and this vast celestial frame –

  The eightfold heaven – darkens, bowed by shame.’

  And then the tortured souls in hell will say:

  ‘From joys of paradise you turn away;

  Such lowly happiness is not for you –

  All that you say is true, we know how true!

  In hell’s accursed provinces we reign

  Clothed head to foot in fire’s devouring pain;

  But when we glimpse that radiant face and know

  That we must live for ever here below,

  Cut off through all eternity from grace –

  Such longing seizes us for that far face,

  Such unappeasable and wild regret,

  That in our anguished torment we forget

  The pit of hell and all its raging fire;

  For what are flames to comfortless desire?’”

  The man who feels such longing takes no part

  In public prayers; he prays within his heart.

  Regret and sighs should be your portion here;

  In sighs rejoice, in longing persevere –

  And if beneath the sky’s oppressive dome

  Wounds scar you, you draw nearer to your home;

  Don’t flinch from pain or search here for its cure.

  Uncauterized your wounds must bleed; endure!

  The man who wanted a prayer-mat

  Once someone asked the Prophet to provide

  A prayer-mat, and the best of men replied:

  lines 3218–33

  “The desert’s arid sands are burning now.

  Pray there; against the hot dust press your brow

  And feel it sear your flesh; the wounded skin

  Will be an emblem of the wound within.”

  If no scar marks your heart, the countenance

  Of love will pass you by without a glance;

  But heart’s wounds show that on the battlefield

  Your friends have found a man who will not yield.’

  A bird asks how long the journey is, and the hoopoe describes the seven valleys of the Way

  Another bird said: ‘Hoopoe, you can find

  The way from here, but we are almost blind –

  The path seems full of terrors and despair.

  Dear hoopoe, how much further till we’re there?’

  ‘Before we reach our goal,’ the hoopoe said,

  ‘The journey’s seven valleys lie ahead;

  How far this is the world has never learned,

  For no one who has gone there has returned –

  Impatient bird, who would retrace this trail?

  There is no messenger to tell the tale,

  And they are lost to our concerns below –

  How can men tell you what they do not know?

  The first stage is the Valley of the Quest;

  Then Love’s wide valley is our second test;

  The third is Insight into Mystery,

  The fourth Detachment and Serenity –

  The fifth is Unity; the sixth is Awe,

  A deep Bewilderment unknown before,

  The seventh Poverty and Nothingness –

  And there you are suspended, motionless,

  Till you are drawn – the impulse is not yours –

  A drop absorbed in seas that have no shores.

  lines 3234–50

  The Valley of the Quest

  When you begin the Valley of the Quest

  Misfortunes will deprive you of all rest,

  Each moment some new trouble terrifies,

  And parrots there are panic-stricken flies.

  There years must vanish while you strive and grieve;

  There is the heart of all you will achieve –

  Renounce the world, your power and all you own,

  And in your heart’s blood journey on alone.

  When once your hands are empty, then your heart

  Must purify itself and move apart

  From everything that is – when this is done,

  The Lord’s light blazes brighter than the sun,

  Your heart is bathed in splendour and the quest

  Expands a thousandfold within your breast.

  Though fire flares up across his path, and though

  A hundred monsters peer out from its glow,

  The pilgrim driven on by his desire

  Will like a moth rush gladly on the fire.

  When love inspires his heart he begs for wine,

  One drop to be vouchsafed him as a sign –

  And when he drinks this drop both worlds are gone;

  Dry-lipped he founders in oblivion.

  His zeal to know faith’s mysteries will make

  Him fight with dragons for salvation’s sake –

  Though blasphemy and curses crowd the gate,

  Until it opens he will calmly wait,

  And then where is this faith? this blasphemy?

  Both vanish into strengthless vacancy.

  Eblis* and God’s curse

  God breathed the pure soul into Adam’s dust,

  And as He did so said the angels must,

  lines 3251–72

  In sight of Adam, bow down to the ground

  (God did not wish this secret to be found).

  All bowed, and not one saw what God had done,

  Except Eblis, who bowed himself to none.

  He said: “Who notices if I don’t bow?

  I don’t care if they cut my head off now;

  I know this Adam’s more than dust – I’ll see

  Why God has ordered all this secrecy.”

  He hid himself and kept watch like a spy.

  God said: “Come out – I see you peer and pry;

  You know my treasure’s home and you must die.

  The kings who hide a treasure execute

  Their secret’s witnesses to keep them mute –

  You saw the place, and shall the fact be spread

  Through all the world? Prepare to lose your head!”

  Eblis replied: “Lord, pity me; I crave

  For mercy, Lord; have mercy on your slave.”

  God answered him: “Well, I will mitigate

  The rigour and the justice of your fate;

  But round your neck will shine a ring to show />
  Your treachery to all the world below –

  For fraudulence and guile you will be known

  Until the world ends and the last trump’s blown.”

  Eblis replied: “And what is that to me?

  I saw the treasure and I now go free!

  To curse belongs to You and to forgive,

  All creatures of the world and how they live;

  Curse on! This poison’s part of Your great scheme

  And life is more than just an opium-dream.

  All creatures seek throughout the universe

  What will be mine for ever now – Your curse!”

  Search for Him endlessly by day and night,

  Till victory rewards your stubborn fight;

  And if He seems elusive He is there –

  Your search is incomplete; do not despair.

  lines 3273–91

  The death of Shebli

  As Shebli’s death approached his eyes grew dim;

  Wild torments of impatience troubled him –

  But strangest was that round his waist he tied

  A heathen’s belt,* and weeping sat beside

  Heaped ash, with which he smeared his hair and head.

  “Why wait for death like this?” a stranger said,

  And Shebli cried: “What will become of me?

  I melt, I burn with fevered jealousy,

  And though I have renounced the universe

  I covet what Eblis procured – God’s curse.”

  So Shebli mourned, uncaring if his Lord

  Gave other mortals this or that reward;

  Bright jewels and stones are equal from His hand,

  And if His gems are all that you demand,

  Ours is a Way you cannot understand –

  Think of the stones and jewels he gives as one;

  They are not yours to hope for or to shun.

  The stone your angry lover flings may hurt,

  But others’ jewels compared with it are dirt.

  Each moment of this quest a man must feel

  His soul is spilt, and unremitting zeal

  Should force him onward at whatever cost –

  The man who pauses on our path is lost.

  Majnoun searches for Leili

  Once someone saw Majnoun, oppressed with pain,

  Sifting the dusty highway grain by grain,

  And asked: “What are you searching for, my friend?”

  He cried: “My search for Leili has no end.”

  The man protested: “Leili is a girl,

  And dust will not conceal this precious pearl!”

  Majnoun replied: “I search in every place;

  Who knows where I may glimpse her lovely face?”

  lines 3292–3310

  Yusef of Hamadan, a learned seer,

  Once said: “Above, below, in every sphere,

  Each atom is a Jacob fervently

  Searching for Joseph through eternity.”

  By pain and grief the pilgrim is perplexed

  But struggles on through this world and the next –

  And if the goal seems endlessly concealed,

  Do not give up your quest; refuse to yield.

  What patience must be theirs who undertake

  The pilgrim’s journey for salvation’s sake!

  Now, like a baby curled inside the womb,

  Wait patiently within your narrow room;

  Ignore the world – blood is your element;

  Blood is the unborn child’s sole nourishment.*

  What is the world but wretchedness and fear?

  Endure, be steadfast till your time draws near.

  Sheikh Mahna and the peasant

  In deep despair Sheikh Mahna made his way

  Across the empty desert wastes one day.

  A peasant with a cow came into sight,

  And from his body played a lambent light –

  He hailed the man and started to narrate

  The hopeless turmoil of his wretched state.

  The old man heard, then said: “O Bou Sa’id,

  Imagine someone piled up millet seed

  From here to highest heaven’s unknown dimes,

  And then repeated this a hundred times;

  And now imagine that a bird appears

  And pecks one grain up every thousand years,

  Then flies around the earth’s circumference

  A hundred times – from heaven’s eminence

  In all those years no sign would come to show

  Sheikh Bou Sa’id the Truth he longs to know.”

  lines 3311–30

  Such is the patience that our pilgrims need,

  And many start our quest, but few succeed;

  Through pain and blood their journey lies – blood hides

  The precious musk the hunted deer provides;

  And he who does not seek is like a wall,

  Dead, blank and bland, no living man at all;

  He is, God pardon me, a walking skin,

  A picture with no life or soul within.

  If you discover in your quest a jewel,

  Do not, like some delighted doting fool,

  Gloat over it – search on, you’re not its slave;

  It is not treasures by the way you crave.

  To make an idol of the gems you find

  Is to be drunk, to cloud the searching mind –

  At this first glass your soul should not submit;

  Seek out the wine-press of the infinite.

  Shah Mahmoud and the sweeper

  Shah Mahmoud rode without a guard one night.

  A man who swept the streets came into sight,

  Sifting through dust-heaps pile by filthy pile.

  The king drew rein and with a gracious smile

  Flung down his bracelet on the nearest heap;

  Then like the wind he left the searching sweep.

  Some later night the king returned and saw

  The man engaged exactly as before.

  He said: “I threw a bracelet on the ground;

  You could redeem the world with what you found!

  You could be like a king, a lord of men,

  And yet I find you sifting dust again!”

  The sweep replied: “The treasure that you gave

  Made me a hidden, greater treasure’s slave –

  I have perceived the door to wealth and I

  Shall sift through dust-heaps till the day I die.”

  Search for the Way! The door stands open, but

  Your eyes that should perceive the door are shut!

  lines 3331–48

  Once someone cried to God: “Lord, let me see

  The door between us opened unto me !”

  And Rabe’eh said: “Fool to chatter so –

  When has the door been closed, I’d like to know?”

  The Valley of Love

  Love’s valley is the next, and here desire

  Will plunge the pilgrim into seas of fire,

  Until his very being is enflamed

  And those whom fire rejects turn back ashamed.

  The lover is a man who flares and bums,

  Whose face is fevered, who in frenzy yearns,

  Who knows no prudence, who will gladly send

  A hundred worlds toward their blazing end,

  Who knows of neither faith nor blasphemy,

  Who has no time for doubt or certainty,

  To whom both good and evil are the same,

  And who is neither, but a living flame.

  But you! Lukewarm in all you say or do,

  Backsliding, weak –O, no, this is not you

  True lovers give up everything they own

  To steal one moment with the Friend alone –

  They make no vague, procrastinating vow,

  But risk their livelihood and risk it now.

  Until their hearts are burnt, how can they flee

  From their desire’s incessant misery?

  They are the falcon when it flies
distressed

  In circles, searching for its absent nest –

  They are the fish cast up upon the land

  That seeks the sea and shudders on the sand.

  Love here is fire; its thick smoke clouds the head –

  When love has come the intellect has fled;

  It cannot tutor love, and all its care

  Supplies no remedy for love’s despair.

  If you could seek the unseen you would find

  lines 3349–64

  Love’s home, which is not reason or the mind,

  And love’s intoxication tumbles down

  The world’s designs for glory and renown –

  If you could penetrate their passing show

  And see the world’s wild atoms, you would know

  That reason’s eyes will never glimpse one spark

  Of shining love to mitigate the dark.

  Love leads whoever starts along our Way;

  The noblest bow to love and must obey –

  But you, unwilling both to love and tread

  The pilgrim’s path, you might as well be dead!

  The lover chafes, impatient to depart,

  And longs to sacrifice his life and heart.

  A lord who loved a beer-seller

  Love led a lord through paths of misery.

  He left his splendid house and family

  And acted like a drunkard to be near

  The boy he loved, who lived by selling beer –

  He sold his house and slaves and all he had

  To get the means to buy beer from this lad.

  When everything was gone and he grew poor

  His love grew stronger, more and then yet more –

  Though food was given him by passers-by,

  His endless hunger made him long to die

  (Each morsel that he had would disappear,

  Not to be eaten but exchanged for beer,

  And he was happy to endure the pain,

  Knowing that soon he could buy beer again).

  When someone asked: “What is this love?” he cried:

  “It is to sell the world and all its pride –

  A hundred times – to buy one drop of beer.”

  Such acts denote true love, and it is clear

  That those who cannot match this devotee

  Have no acquaintance with love’s misery.

  lines 3365–77

  Majnoun’s love for Leili

  When Leili’s tribe refused Majnoun, he found

  They would not let him near their camping-ground.

  Distraught with love, he met a shepherd there