Basatin al-uns 77.145

77.145

“And a night of trailing skirts, letting down curtains from the pitch darkness, / so that it covered all that was visible;
Even had the blazing sun unveiled her face in it, / from the excess of its darkness her light would have become hidden.”
One saw the revolving sphere within it as though it were sick, having forgotten its rotation;
The ascetic, guided by inner light and directed by the candle of the conscience, went along ways crooked as a bow, straighter than an arrow,
and did not let go of my hand for a single moment, like a bead of a rosary, until the moment when that
flowing enclosed fountain and that bestower of the world's dignity, that naked one who clothes the people of the world in robes of light, and that
lord who turns the pebble on the mountain peak into a lustrous gem, that army-less conqueror of the world, that traveler of sea
and land, that bezel of the signet-ring of heaven, that neighbor of the abode of the Messiah, a fire that pours the Water of Life of growth and flourish into the palate
of plant offspring, and a painter who blends another color in the hidden depths of every mine, now giving the gold-woven veil of twilight
to evening, now placing the silver-coated cloak of morning upon the shoulder of dawn, now setting the moon like a silver ball rolling
in the arena of the emerald plain of the sky, and now hiding it like a golden polo-stick in the corner of the west, now
wearing a golden crown on its head like Jamshīd, and now donning a black garment over green in the manner of the Abbasids, that warm loaf
which falls into no mouth but that of nature, that unminted dinar which enters the pocket of no hopeful soul, that affliction-
increaser of those who fast, that unveiler of thieves showed its face; following the guidance of that serene ascetic and
special servant of the Divine Majesty, I reached the promised place. I saw a garden pure and heart-expanding like the highest Paradise,
and with varieties of sweet-smelling herbs beyond count and reckoning like the leaves of trees, colorful, musky white flowers upon
green boughs appearing in such a way that you would say luminous stars had risen on the apex of the revolving celestial sphere, or
the hand of divine omnipotence had scattered royal pearls upon the emerald court. The red rose gave a sign of Joseph's
torn, blood-stained shirt, and the narcissus, exactly like the eye of Zulaykhā awaiting the sight of her beloved,
did not blink an eye: