"Love is a Stranger"

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"Love is a Stranger"

Heart came on solid footing with breath
refined
to warn the best of communities.
Heart placed your head
like a pen on the page of love.

We are joyous pennants in your just wind.
Master, to where do you dance?

"Toward the land of liberation,
toward the plain of non-existence. "

Master, tell us which non-existence you mean.
"The ear of eternity knows the letter of eternity."

Love is a stranger with a strange language,
like an Arab in Persia. I have brought a story;
it is strange, like the one who tells it.
Listen to your servant.

Joseph's face enlightened the well in which he was suspended.
His imprisonment became a palace
with orchards and meadows, a paradise,
a royal hall, and a chamber of sanctity.

Just as you toss a stone into the water,
the water at that very moment parts to receive it.
Just as a cloudy night is dispelled by a clear dawn,
from his humiliation and loss he views high heaven.

Reason, do not envy my mouth.
God witnesses the blessings.
Though the tree drinks from hidden roots,
we see the display of its branches.
Whatever the earth took from heaven,
it yields up honestly in spring.

Whether you have stolen a bead or a jewel,
whether you have raised a flag or a pen,
the night is gone and the day has arrived
and the sleeper shall see what he has dreamed.

-- Ghazal (Ode) 1769
Version by Kabir Helminski
"Love is a Stranger"
Threshold Books, 1993

The media:
http://tinyurl.com/26245l

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"Love is a Stranger"