I am a fountain, You are my water
by Zeynep HatunEnglish version by Murat Yagan
Original Language Turkish
I am a fountain, You are my water.
I flow from You to You.
I am an eye, You are my light.
I look from You to You.
You are neither my right nor my left.
You are my foot and my arm as well.
I am a traveler, You are my road.
I go from You to You.
 | -- from This Dance of Bliss: Ecstatic Poetry from Around the World, Edited by Ivan M. Granger |
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I have loved this poem ever since I discovered it years ago. That makes it doubly frustrating that, in the intervening years, I have only found one other poem by her in English translation (and that second poem's translation was a rather dry Victorian translation).
This single poem suggests such a richness of soul behind it. Perhaps it is enough to stand for all the poems that have fallen silent.
I am a fountain, You are my water.
I flow from You to You.
The fountain's structure can represent the individual, the body, the outer form, while the water suggests to us the spirit, the animating life that flows through us, that which gives purpose to the form.
But perhaps this is an overly formal interpretation of the image. The fountain's structure and the water are not truly separate. They work together. The fountain without water is an empty tub with empty pipes. But the water without the fountain is a still pool. We, as individuals, are more than vessels for spirit. We are somehow its living expression. This is a mutual participation, a shared being that brings dancing water to the world.
I flow from You to You.
As we recognize a sense of self at one with the Divine, that self is no longer fixed. Whatever we are, we flow. And wherever we flow, we remain in continuous contact with the Beloved.
I am an eye, You are my light.
I look from You to You.
We imagine that we are individual and separate beings, but it is more accurate to say that we are individual points of perception within one immense, all-encompassing being. The sense of a fixed and separate self can fade, but awareness and the perception of reality remain essential to our nature. We exist in some sense as a divine act of vision, witnesses to creation. And everything we see shines with the light of the Beloved.
You are neither my right nor my left.
You are my foot and my arm as well.
The Divine Beloved is neither here nor there, but everywhere at once, ungraspable. Our very being is of that singular Presence. It fills us, moves us, and gives us life.
I am a traveler, You are my road.
I go from You to You.
On this road, each step, each arc of movement and point of rest, is another instance of contact. We find God all the way to God.
Recommended Books: Zeynep Hatun
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| This Dance of Bliss: Ecstatic Poetry from Around the World | Women of Sufism: A Hidden Treasure - Writings and Stories of Mystics Poets, Scholars & Saints | |||
