[Sunlight] "How can a lover be joined to sensuality?"

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In truth, love for the Illuminator of hearts keeps
Lovers awake all night without food and sleep.
Oh friend, if you are a lover, be like a candle:
Melt all night long, burn joyfully till morning!
He who is like cold weather in autumn is no
lover -- in autumn's midst the lover's heart is burning summer.
Dear friend, if you have a love you want to
proclaim, then shout like a lover! Shout! Shout!
But if you are chained by sensuality, make no
claims to Love -- enter the spiritual retreat and burn away your
chains!
Oh simple man, how can a lover be joined to
sensuality? How could Jesus eat from the same trough as his
ass?
If you want to catch the fragrance of these
symbols, then turn your eyes away from everything but Shams
al-Din of Tabriz!
But if you cannot see that he is greater than the
two worlds, you are still a wretch drowned in the ocean of
heedlessness.
So go before the teachers of conventional
knowledge -- busy yourself with jurisprudence and become a
master of the science of "This is permitted and that is
forbidden."
My spirit has passed beyond childhood in love
for Shams al-Din -- love for him is not mixed with raisins and
nuts.
My intellect has left me and my verses are
incomplete -- that is why my bow has no more designs and
wrappings.
Oh Jalal al-Din, sleep and abandon speech! No
leopard will ever catch that lion!

-- Ghazal (Ode) 1196
Translation by William C. Chittick
"The Sufi Path of Love"
SUNY Press, Albany, 1983

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[Sunlight] "How can a lover be joined to sensuality?"