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About True Seekers by Farid ud-Din Attar English version by Sholeh Wolpé |
Wayfarer, know that in the battlefield of pain,
love may come with annihilation.
You whose existence is mingled
with nonexistence,
you whose joys are mingled with grief,
if you don't experience some ups and downs,
how will you ever know relief?
You bravely strike like lightning,
then cover yourself with rubbish
to protect against the shock.
What are you doing?
Rise up like a true seeker.
Set fire to reason
and flare into a mad lover.
If you hesitate over this alchemy,
at least come and take a quick look.
How long will you stay in your head?
Become like me, leave your self.
For once, show foresight
so that in the end you too can become
a dervish and joyfully arrive
at annihilation of the self.
I who am neither myself nor other than myself
have traveled beyond reason, good and evil thoughts.
I've lost my self within myself.
The only cure is the incurable.
When the sun of poverty landed on me,
both worlds twirled together into a single shaft of light.
And when I saw that column of light
I passed on into no self; became
a drop of water and joined the stream.
All that I had won and lost,
I threw away into black waters.
I disappeared, became lost, void.
I became a shadow without a single atom,
a drop of water that had joined the ocean.
Good luck finding that droplet.
Such loss of self is not for all,
but I joined the eternal union
and there are many like me.
Who in the world, from a dust mote to the moon,
wouldn't want to be lost this way?
 | -- from The Conferences of the Birds, by Attar / Translated by Sholeh Wolpé |
/ Image by Fernando Rodrigues /
View All Poems by Farid ud-Din Attar
I have been thinking this morning of the meandering road that has been the Poetry Chaikhana. I first set up the Poetry Chaikhana website in 2004. That's twenty years! During those twenty years I have expanded the library of online poetry to include several hundred poets from around the world and throughout history. In the early days I often sent out five or six poem emails a week! That's when the "daily poem" was truly a daily poem. I eventually shifted to three a week and finally settled into the current rhythm of one poem email (almost) every week. (I still catch myself wanting to refer to it as the "daily poem" and have to pivot to "poem email.")
But it's just hitting me today: Twenty years! There are young adults today who were not even born when I started the Poetry Chaikhana online. On the Internet, anything older than five years seems lost in the mists of prehistory. There are two possible explanation for the Poetry Chaikhana's survival over these twenty years... One is, obviously, ancient aliens. The other explanation is you, the Poetry Chaikhana community. Your steady support and comments and, yes, even prayers year after year, through my own personal ups and downs, through the evolving online landscape, your purchase of books, your donations, your poetry suggestions, the stories you've shared of your own personal journeys -- all of that together is why the Poetry Chaikhana is still here today.
At this moment I am feeling immense gratitude for you all. This is my opportunity to say thank you to all of you!
It is poems like this that still make me say, Wow! I have to share this with all the mad lovers out there!
What are you doing?
Rise up like a true seeker.
Set fire to reason
and flare into a mad lover.
Even the poems that are dark and challenging, especially them. The ones I have to gird up to read, where it takes all my courage just to take a quick honest look--
If you hesitate over this alchemy,
at least come and take a quick look.
--those are the ones most haunt my complacency and, ultimately, become my closest friends.
These are the voices that call us into us into lands unknown... losing our selves--
I disappeared, became lost, void.
I became a shadow without a single atom,
a drop of water that had joined the ocean.
Good luck finding that droplet.
Such loss of self is not for all,
but I joined the eternal union
and there are many like me.
-- in order to arrive precisely at the Self of selves.
Who in the world, from a dust mote to the moon,
wouldn't want to be lost this way?
Have a beautiful day!
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 / Photo by Maria Hossmar / |
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