[Sunlight] Entering the Shell -- Ghazal 843

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Entering the Shell

Love is alive, and someone borne
along by it is more alive than lions

roaring or men in their fierce courage.
Bandits ambush others on the road.

They get wealth but they stay in one
place. Lovers keep moving, never

the same, not for a second! What
makes others grieve, they enjoy!

When they look angry, don't believe
their faces. It's spring lightning,

a joke before the rain. They chew
thorns thoughtfully along with pasture

grass. Gazelle and lioness, having
dinner. Love is invisible except

here, in us. Sometimes I praise love;
sometimes love praises me. Love,

a little shell somewhere on the ocean
floor, opens its mouth. You and I

and we, those imaginary beings, enter
that shell as a single sip of seawater.

-- Ghazal (Ode) 843
Version by Coleman Barks, with Nevit Ergin
"The Glance"
Viking-Penguin, 1999

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[Sunlight] Entering the Shell -- Ghazal 843