PROLOGUE

to Iqbal's Asrar-i-Khudi

Translated by

M. Hadi Hussain

When the world-illuminating sun

Waylaid Night like a highwayman,

My tears bedewed the rose's face

And washed away all trace

Of slumber from the eyes

Of the narcissus, and my cries

Aroused the sleeping grass.

The gardener tried the power of my verse:

He sowed a pattern-line and reaped a sword.

My tears thenceforward were the only seeds he sowed.

He wove the woof of my lament across

The garden's warp. Though I am but a mote,

The radiant sun belongs to me. I nurse

A hundred mornings in my lap

My dust is brighter far

Than Jamshed's world-reflecting cup;

For I know things that are

Still in the future's womb. My thought,

A hunter, has, slung from its saddle, deer

That have as yet to leap forth from

Non-being's thicket. Grass as yet to grow

Lends beauty to my lawn,

And roses yet to blow

Are gathered in my gown.

I struck dumb the musicians where

They had assembled to perform,

Because I smote

The heartstrings of the universe.

My genius is a lute

With a rare melody.

Strange even to my comrades is my verse.

I am a newborn sun,

Unused to the ways of the sky;

The stars are not yet on the run

Before my light's advance;

The mercury in me

Has yet to be

Astir; my rays have yet to dance

On the sea's surface; and

The mountains stand

Still untouched by my crimson dye.

Creation's eye

Is still unused to me.

I tremble with the fear

Of having to appear;

For night has ceased to be

And dawns at last my day.

A fresh dew settles on

The world's rose. I await

Those early risers who at dawn

Wake up to pray.

O happy they who will adore my fire.

I am that music which does not require

A plectrum to pluck it from strings.

I am tomorrow's poet's voice,

Which in today's void sings.

My age does not appreciate

The meaning of life's mysteries.

The Joseph I am will not fetch a price

In the slave-market of today.

I have no hope in my contemporaries.

My Sinai is all lit up for

A Moses who is on his way.

My comrades' sea is silent to the core

Like dew, whereas my very dew

Is like a storm-tossed sea.

My song is from another world,

A world as yet to be.

It is a call to the road, a bell tolled

For caravans not yet in view.

O many poets were reborn

After their death : they shut their own

Eyes, but they opened ours.

They issued forth again

From non-being's domain,

And grew upon their graves as flowers.

Though many caravans have crossed

The desert, yet they passed

As silently as the steps of a dromedary.

But lover that I am, to wail

Is my vocation, and a boom

Of lamentation like the crack of doom

Heralds my progress on the trail

I blaze. My voice outsings

My instrument's capacity.

But I am not afraid to snap its strings

In drawing from it a fit melody.

Mere drops had better keep

Clear of the flood I generate:

Only the bosom of the deep

Can bear the fury of its spate.

Mere rivulets cannot contain

My sea: my storm is only for the main.

Buds not grown into whole rose gardens are

Unworthy of my vernal showers.

In my soul thunders lie at rest.

Desert and mountain are at best

Mere passages my spirit scours

In journeying afar

Are you a desert? If so, try

To suck my ocean dry.

A Sinai? If so, brave my lightning's stroke.

I have been granted access to the springs

Of everlasting life, and I evoke

The living soul of things.

Mere specks of dust are quickened by

My song and, growing wings of light, they fly

Like glow-worms. There has been

No one before me who has sung

Of truths that lie concealed,

No one whose thought has .strung

Pure pearls of wisdom such as mine.

If you desire to have revealed

To you the secret of eternal bliss,

Then come to me: I will give you both this

And full dominion over earth and sky.

It was the Old Man of the Sky who told

Me all the secrets of the spheres,

And I do not think I

Should try to hold

Them back from my confreres.

----------

Come, saki, fill my cup with wine;

Make me forget all griefs of mine.

Give me that liquid fire, as pure

As Zam Zam's water, which for sure

Can make mere beggars feel like kings,

Which lends imagination wings,

Endows the eye with keener sight,

Bestows upon a leaf of grass

The weight of a whole mountain's mass,

Gives to a fox a lion's might,

Uplifts dust to the Pleiades,

Expands drops into boundless seas,

Turns silence to the din of Judgment Day,

Dyes partridges' claws red with falcons' blood.

Come, saki, fill my cup and flood

My intellect's night with the light

Of moon-bright wine that I might lead

Back to the right path those who stray,

Give idle eyes the zest

To see, advance on a new quest,

Be animated by a fresh desire,

Become the pupil of the eye

Of people with insight,

Re-echo as a vibrant cry

In the world's ears,

Uplift to a new height

The worth of poesy,

Increasing for the buyer

My goods' weight by

Besprinkling them with tears,

And, last of all, rehearse

The sealed-up book of secret lore

With guidance from the Master of Rum's verse.

He was a soul always aflame;

I am a brief spark, nothing more.

He flung his flame at me,

The moth, and his wine came

Flooding my cup. His alchemy

Transmuted me, mere dust, to gold,

And built in me untold

Realms of epiphany. A grain of sand

Set forth to gain

The sun's domain.

I am a sea wave, and

Will lodge myself in Rumi's sea

To make a shining pearl my property.

I, who am drunken with his wine,

Draw from his breath this life of mine.

----------

One night my heart was so full of lament

I filled the silence with my cries to God,

Complaining of the hardness of my lot

 And of the emptiness of my wine-pot.

My vision, seeking some redress abroad,

Beat its wings so hard that they bent

And broke; so it dissolved at' length

 Into a dream, in which appeared to me

He who wrote the Quran in Pahlavi.

He said : "0 lover of the votaries

Of Love, take a draught of Love's wine

From this wine jar of mine

At its full strength

And free from lees.

Strike hard your heartstrings, fling

A tempest at each string.

Against the goblet dash your hand

And on the lancet hurl your eye;

And of your laughter make a cry,

And let the bloodstained tears you shed

Be pieces of your heart, drops of pure blood.

How long will you stay silent like a bud?

Broadcast your fragrance as a rose

Does when it blows.

Throw yourself on the fire; like rue

You have a tumult locked up inside you.

From every organ like a bell

Send forth a loud lament, a yell.

O you are fire, set everything aglow;

Burn and make others burn with you.

Proclaim the old wine-seller's secrets : shine

Through the cup's crystal robe like wine.

Be a stone to the mirror of anxiety :

Smash your wine bottles in the market-place.

Send forth a message from the reedbed's privacy

           Like a reed-flute : send glad tidings to Qais

From Laila's tribe. Invent a new style for your song.

Enliven the assembly with your lusty strains.

Arise and re-inspire all living ones.

Pronounce `Arise' and make them all the more alive.

Arise and set your feet on a new path, and drive

Out of your head old passions you have nursed for long.

Come savour the delight of self-expression: sing.

O caravan bell, ring."

These words set my whole soul afire

And filled me with a strong desire

To break into song like a flute,

And be no longer mute.

So I arose as music does from strings

And sang as one in frenzy sings.

I unveiled the Self's mysteries

And showed its wonders to men's eyes.

--------

My being was a statue incomplete,

Ungainly, worthless and rough-hewn.

Love chiselled me into a man,

And then made known

The secrets of the universe to me.

To my eyes it has shown

The movements of the sinews of the sky,

The world's heartbeat,

The blood coursing in the veins of the moon.

O many a night did I cry

Over man's state and try

To tear apart the veil

From the face of life's mystery,

Until I had extracted from

The school of natural events

And human incidents

True knowledge of life's quiddity.

I, who lend beauty to this night

Like the moon's lovely light,

Am as mere dust under the feet

Of the bright milla of Islam,

Whose fame resounds in hill and dale

And the life-giving heat

Of whose fresh songs warms up the heart.

It sowed an atom, and it reaped a sun:

Its harvest was a galaxy of stars

A hundred Rumis and Attars,

A master everyone

Of the poetic art.

I am an ardent sigh,

And will mount up the sky.

Though mere smoke, I am sprung from fire :

To soar upward I must aspire.

My pen, driven by

Thoughts that fly high,

Has laid bare things that lie

Behind the nine veils of the sky,

So that the merest drop may stand

Co-equal with the sea,

And every grain of sand

Attain the Sahara's immensity.

----------

The purpose of this mathnawi

Is not composing poetry:

No images of beauty have I made,

No love songs have I sung.

I am an Indian not much skilled

In writing in the Persian tongue.

A new-born crescent moon am I

With a cup as yet to be filled.

Do not expect from my

Pen stylish writing of the grade

Of poets from Khansar and Isfahan,

Those masters of the language of Iran.

Though Urdu is as sweet as sugar, yet

The Persian mode of speech excels it.

I was enchanted by its loveliness

And my pen, so to speak, became

As a twig of the Burning Bush aflame

With the urge to reveal.

Persian, indeed, fits my thoughts' loftiness.

O you who read this book of mine,

Do not find fault with the wine glass, but feel

And concentrate on the taste of the wine.