I turn so much around my heart
that my body cannot carry my weight,
and my soul cannot stand my fight.
I will turn around this mine
until my being is totally disintegrated,
my wires completely broken.
Body, you are obstinate. So am I.
Sometimes even the male lion
bends his head when faced with my persistence.
How can the body not turn around the soul,
when the soul looks like a sky filled with torches?
O Beauty! O the attraction point of my compass-like soul!
The millstone turns as water flows through it..
But you wouldn’t know that.
You said that it’s enough for all of my wheat to become flour.
The millstone doesn’t care for your floor or for your grain.
As long as water flows through it,
it turns around my secrets like a whirling sky.
I am a sieve in His hands.
He moves and turns me around. That is His business.
To be a sieve is my business.
Neither truth nor appearance remain.
Now water has gone. So has the grass.
Seizing the moment, I say,
“O my rose-faced Beauty, come.”
O One who becomes Soul to my drunken soul,
O One who escaped last night from my hand, be kind to me.
Look at my broken heart.
O my soul, beg that Beloved so that He calls you like this:
“O my soul, O my sustenance, O my livelihood!”
My body looks like a spindle when I am in silence.
God, keep spinning my thread.
Make a ball out of the threads of my body.
The thread and spinning of the thread are invisible.
The spindle and its turns are visible.
The spindle says, “Without His hold and pull, how can I do this work?”
The body is like a turban.
The soul is like a head.
The body covers the soul in every curve like a turban.
O Shemseddin, You are sometimes like a turban, sometimes a head.
I’m afraid You will find an excuse
to change Your mind about meeting me and disappear.
Divan-i Kebir, Volume 1, ghazal 102, verses 1293-1306, pages 247-248.