Wounded Heart

[Guest guest]

Stay now at the ruins

in La`la`i, fading,

and in that wasteland, grieve,

for those we loved.

At the campsite, now abandoned,

stay and call her name,

as your heart is softly

torn away,

For the time of one like me

spent near her moringa's gossamer flowering,

plucking at fruits, in measure,

and at the petals of a rose, red, ripening.

Everyone who wanted you--

you showered with graces.

Only to me did your lightning flash,

unfaithful.

Yes, she said,

there we used to come together,

in the shade of my branches,

in that luxuriant land.

My lightning

was the flash of smiles,

Now it is the blaze

of barren stone.

So blame that time

we had no way of warding off.

What fault is it

of La`la`i?

I forgave her

as I heard her speak,

grieving as I grieved

with a wounded heart.

I asked her--

when I saw her meadows

now fields of the four

scouring, twisting winds--

Did they tell you

where they'd take their noonday rest?

Yes, she said,

at Sandrock,

Where the white tents gleam

with what they hold--

from all those rising suns--

of splendor.

--from: " Stations of Desires " (Tarjuman al-Ashwaq)

" love elegies from Ibn 'Arabi and new poems "

Ibn Arabi, Poem no. 24

Translated by Sells

Jerusalem, Ibis Editions, 2000.