Both this world and the next

by Farid ud-Din Attar

English version by Sholeh Wolpé
Original Language Persian/Farsi

Both this world and the next
are adrift within the soul.
The body hidden in the soul,
the soul secreted in the body
-- each is lost inside the other.

Emerge from your confusion,
find the inner seat of your humanity.
There, a single breath will fill you
with the answer to a hundred mysteries.

But if you waver in the Path,
lamentation will swallow you from head to toe.
Keep vigil at night and fast during the day,
until yearning for knowledge
surfaces within you.

Year and seek until everything,
even the yearning itself, evaporates.

-- from The Conferences of the Birds, by Attar / Translated by Sholeh Wolpé

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Poetry for the Spirit: Poems of Universal Wisdom and Beauty The Drunken Universe: An Anthology of Persian Sufi Poetry Music of a Distant Drum: Classical Arabic, Persian, Turkish & Hebrew Poems Perfume of the Desert: Inspirations from Sufi Wisdom The Conferences of the Birds
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Both this world and