Valley of Unity

by Farid ud-Din Attar

English version by Sholeh Wolpé
Original Language Persian/Farsi

Arrive in the Valley of Unity
and give up everything except the absolute.

All who traverse this valley
will leave sharing a single collar.
Here, the many and the few
will merge and meld into one.

When many are united in the One forever,
then all inside the One is a perfection.

This is not a place for uniformity;
here you find unity in diversity.

Everything here is outside of time,
outside of measurements,
so forget about the Beginning,
forget about the End.

The Beginning is lost;
the End stretches to eternity.
Don't bother with them, they're irrelevant.
And since all is really nothing,
then nothing is truly everything.

-- 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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Valley of Unity