[Sunlight] For a time, cling fast

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Oh brother! For a time cling fast to your intellect:
Moment by moment spring and autumn are within you.
Behold the garden of the heart, green and fresh and
new, full of rosebuds and cypress and jasmine -
So many leave that the branches are hidden, so many
roses that the plain and pavilion are concealed!
These words - which derive from the Universal Intellect -
are the fragrance of that rosebud and cypress and hyacinth . . . .
The meaning of dying is need: Make yourself dead in need
and poverty,
So that Jesus' breath may bring you to life and make it
like itself: beautiful and auspicious.
When did stones ever become green through spring?
Become dust, so that you may grow up as multicolored roses.
For years you have been heart-scratching stone - try for
a time being dust!

-- Mathnawi I: 1896-99, 1909-12
Translation by William C. Chittick
"The Sufi Path of Love"
SUNY Press, Albany, 1983

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[Sunlight] For a time, cling fast