To Find Sermons In Stones

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Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

- Shakespeare, As You Like It (Act 2, Scene 1)

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I come from Kashan.
I lead a modest life.
I earn a morsel of bread,
I have a bit of intelligence, an iota of taste.
I have a mother, better than the green leaf.
I have friends, better than the running water.
***
And I have a god nearby:
Somewhere amidst these gillyflowers,
             at the foot of that tall pine.
On top of water's consciousness,
           over the law of the plants.
***
I am a Moslem.
My mecca is a rose.
My mosque is a spring, my prayer stone the light.
Fields make my prayer rug.
I make ablution with the heartbeat of the windows.
Moonlight flows through my prayers, the spectrum too.
Rocks show through my prayers:
Every particle of my prayers is crystalline.
I say my prayers
When I hear the wind call out the faithful
           from the top of the minaret which is the cypress tree.
I say my prayers
When I hear the grass pronounce the takbiratal-ehram.
I say my prayers
When the wave utters the qad-qamat.
***
My kaaba lies by the water,
My kaaba lies under the acacias.
My kaaba travels like the breeze,
           from one garden to the next,
          from one town to another.
My hajar al-asvad is the daylight on the flower beds.
***
Father died before two returns of the swallows,
          before two snowfalls,
Before our twice sleeping on the terrace.
Father died before times past.
When Father died the sky was blue;
Mother awoke unawares,
              causing my sister to become beautiful.
When Father died, all the policemen were poets.
"How many pounds of melons would you like?"
           the grocer asked me.
"How much is an ounce of happiness?" I asked in return.
***
I went to a party, the world's party:
I went to the plain of sorrow,
I went to the garden of mysticism,
To the illuminated arch of science,
Up the stairs of religion,
Down the alleyway of doubt,
As far as the cool air of detachment,
As far as the wet night of affection.
I went to meet someone on the far side of love.
Then I went on and on to woman,
          to the red light of pleasure,
To silenced desire,
To the sound of solitude fluttering its wings.
***
A baby's rattle murdered on the siesta mattress.
A story murdered at the crossroads of sleep.
A sorrow murdered at the orders of a song.
Moonlight murdered by neon.
A willow tree murdered by the State.
A depressed poet murdered by winter flower.
***
I saw many peoples.
I saw many cities.
I saw plains and mountains.
I saw the water and the dry land.
I saw light and darkness.
And I saw the plants in light,
          and I saw them in darkness.
I saw the animals in light,
          and I saw them in darkness.
And I saw mankind in light,
And I saw him in darkness.
***
I come from Kashan
But Kashan is no longer my town.
My hometown has been lost.
With feverish effort, I have built myself a house
On the far side of the night.
***
I have never known two poplars to be enemies.
I have never seen a willow selling its shade
         to the ground.
The elm lets its branch to the crow for free.
Wherever there are leaves, my enthusiasm blossoms.
A poppy plant has bathed me in the rapid flow of being.
***
Life is a pleasant custom.
Life's wings spread out as much as death's.
Life leaps as high as love.
Life is not something to be left behind by you or me
       on the edge of the habit's shelf.
Life is the ecstasy of a hand picking.
Life is the taste of the season's first black figs
        in the acrid mouth of summer.
Life is one dimension of the tree in the eyes
       of an insect.
Life is the experience of a moth in darkness.
Life is that strange sense possessed by a migrating bird.
Life is a train's whistle reverberating in the sleep
       of a bridge.
Life is seeing a flower bed from the enclosed window
       of an airplane.
 Life is the news of a rocket launched into space.
Life is feeling the moon's loneliness.
Life is the idea of smelling flowers on another planet.
***
It's not our job to unravel the mystery of a rose.
Perhaps our job is
To swim in the magic of the rose.
To set up camp behind Wisdom.
To wash our hands in the ecstasy of a leaf
          before we eat.
To be reborn each morning with the rising sun.
To send our thrills up like a kite.
To spray a fine mist over our perception
        of space, color, sound and windows.
To seat the sky between the two syllables of Be-ing.
To fill and refill our lungs with eternity.
To unburden the swallow from its load of knowledge.
To take back the names we have given to the cloud,
To the plane tree, to the mosquito, to the summer.
To climb to the heights of affection
        on the wet legs of the rain.
To open the door to mankind,
         to light, to plants and to insects.
***
Perhaps our job is
To run between the Morning Glory and the Century
In pursuit of the sound of Truth.