Poetry Chaikhana Blog

Ivan M. Granger October 29th, 2008

The Mirror (from The Secret Rose Garden)
by Mahmud Shabistari

English version by Florence Lederer

Your eye has not strength enough
to gaze at the burning sun,
but you can see its burning light
by watching its reflection
mirrored in the water.

Know the world from end to end is a mirror;
in each atom a hundred suns are concealed.
If you pierce the heart of a single drop of water,
from it will flow a hundred clear oceans;
if you look intently at each speck of dust,
in it you will see a thousand beings.
A gnat in its limbs is like an elephant;
in name a drop of water resembles the Nile.
In the heart of a barleycorn is stored a hundred harvests.
Within a millet-seed a world exists.
In an insects wing is an ocean of life.
A heaven is concealed in the pupil of an eye.
The core at the center of the heart is small,
yet the Lord of both worlds will enter there.

— from The Secret Rose Garden: Mahmud Shabistari, Translated by Florence Lederer / Edited by David Fideler

/ Photo by striatic /

More on light… and reflection.

Know the world from end to end is a mirror;
in each atom a hundred suns are concealed.

Whether we know it or not, as we walk through each day we shine.

We contain universes and infinities.

The core at the center of the heart is small,
yet the Lord of both worlds will enter there.

Shabistari’s Secret Rose Garden (the Gulistan-i Raz, which can also be translated as The Rose Garden of Mystery) is considered to be one of the greatest works of Persian Sufism.

Mahmud Shabistari lived in Persia (Iran) during the time of the Mongol invasions of the region. It was a time of massacres and religious sectarianism. Yet it is also during this time that the Golden Age of Persian Sufism emerged.

In the Secret Rose Garden, Shabistari expresses a viewpoint of Sufi realization similar to the perspective of the great Sufi philosopher Ibn Arabi, but expressed through the rich Persian poetic tradition.

The value of Shabistari’s work was recognized almost immediately. Many commentaries on the work by other Sufi mystics soon began to appear. The Secret Rose Garden quickly was regarded as one of the central works of Sufism.

More poetry by Mahmud Shabistari

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