"The Elusive Ones"

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The Elusive Ones

They're lovers again: Sugar dissolving in milk.
Day and night, no difference. The sun is the moon:
an amalgam. Their gold and silver melt together.
This is the season when the dead branch and the green
branch are the same branch.

The cynic bites his finger because he can't understand.
Omar and Ali on the same throne, two kings in one belt.
Nightmares fill with light like a holiday.
Men and angels speak one language.
The elusive ones finally meet.

The essence and the evolving forms
run to meet each other like children
to their father and mother.
Good and evil, dead and alive, everything blooms
from one natural stem.

You know this already, I'll stop.
Any direction you turn it's one vision.
Shams, my body is a candle touched with fire.

-- Ghazal (Ode) 810
Version by Coleman Barks
Open Secret
Threshold Books, 1984

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"The Elusive Ones"