Attar (1145 – 1221)
; ??? ???? ??? ?????? ???????, more famous by his pen-names Far?d ud-D?n and ‘Att?r, was a Persian Muslim poet, mystical philosopher, and hagiographer from Nishapur who had an immense and lasting influence on Persian poetry and Sufism.
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Come you lost Atoms to your Centre draw,
And be the Eternal Mirror that you saw:
Rays that have wander'd into Darkness wide
Return and back into your Sun subside.
I shall grasp the soul's skirt with my hand
and stamp on the world's head with my foot.
I shall trample Matter and Space with my horse,
beyond all Being I shall utter a great shout,
and in that moment when I shall be alone with Him,
I shall whisper secrets to all mankind.
Since I have neither sign nor name
I shall speak only of things unnamed and without sign.
All things are but masks at God's beck and call,
They are symbols that instruct us that God is all.
From each a mystic silence Love demands.
What do all seek so earnestly? 'Tis Love.
What do they whisper to each other? Love.
Love is the subject of their inmost thoughts.
In Love no longer "thou" and "I" exist,
For Self has passed away in the Beloved.
Attar has roamed through the seven cities of love while we have barely turned down the first street.
The Sea
Will be the Sea
Whatever the drop's philosophy.
Don't be dead or asleep or awake.
Don't be anything.
What you most want,
what you travel around wishing to find,
lose yourself as lovers lose themselves,
and you'll be that.
Joy! Joy! I triumph! Now no more I know
Myself as simply me. I burn with love
Unto myself, and bury me in love.
The centre is within me and its wonder
Lies as a circle everywhere about me.
Joy! Joy! No mortal thought can fathom me.
God is Eternal ... Here in this garden of a lower Eden, Attar perfumed the soul of the humblest of men. This is the tomb of a man so eminent that the dust stirred by his feet would have served as collyrium to the eye of the firmament ... and of whom the saints were disciples ... In the year of the Hijra 586 he was pursued by the sword of the army which devoured everything, being martyred in the massacre which then took place ... Increase, O Lord, his merit ... May the glory be with Him who dies not and holds in his hands the keys to unlimited forgiveness and infinite punishment.
All you have been, and seen, and done, and thought,
Not You but I, have seen and been and wrought:
I was the Sin that from Myself rebell'd:
I the Remorse that tow'rd Myself compell'd...
Do all you can to become a bird of the Way to God;
Do all you can to develop your wings and your feathers.
Sin and Contrition — Retribution owed,
And cancell'd — Pilgrim, Pilgrimage, and Road,
Was but Myself toward Myself: and Your
Arrival but Myself at my own Door...
Your face is neither infinite nor ephemeral.
You can never see your own face,
only a reflection, not the face itself.
He who would know the secret of both worlds,
Will find the secret of them both, is Love.
Yet what are seas and what is air? For all
Is God, and but a talisman are heaven and earth
To veil Divinity. For heaven and earth,
Did He not permeate them, were but names;
Know then, that both this visible world and that
Which unseen is, alike are God Himself,
Naught is, save God: and all that is, is God.
Thou all Creation art, all we behold, but Thou,
The soul within the body lies concealed,
And Thou dost hide Thyself within the soul,
O soul in soul! Myst'ry in myst'ry hid!
Before all wert Thou, and are more than all!
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