Both this world and the next
by Farid ud-Din AttarEnglish 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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