Goodbye my Sufi friends and lovers
Nothing now exists to connect you to me.
You are free. Tayyar can be trusted.

I will rise from the trap of this world
I will ask you to be my servant in paradise.
You are my dancer, I am your poet, we laugh
Together on days when I taste rain-drift-clouds.

When you sew I can watch you and fall in love
Again, I remember our first meeting, fleeting
Among the sweet smell of the jasmine
In the rose garden where we couldn’t be
Seen or overheard. You were my perfumed
Idol. Now, you are my window on eternity.

When Mansur Al-Hallaj was finally executed
For the blasphemy of being a Sufi I knew
My time was at hand. The Abbasids do not
Forgive. So, on this tight night of bone-white
Light I do not think of my execution. My Day
Of Death will come regardless. They say

Do not buy wine from a foreigner but this wine
From Andalusia is so sweet and clear, it is like a mirror
Or a still lake, we can see ourselves clear and calm.
Unaffected by ripples which can not draw near
To the dear heart of love.

On this day of rumbling thunder and dark clouds,
Skies swirl and whorl on this day of days.
I am not an unbeliever but I know there are many
Truths. I was accused of paganism for reading the Greek.
Herodotus, the father of History, he did not seek to
Write a Greek version of the Greco-Persian wars
He sought to help us readers to learn from past conflicts.

For Herodotus attributes the causes of war
To both divine and human agents,
Who he did not perceive as being mutually exclusive,
But rather as being mutually interconnected.

Will this day of rumbling never be done?
Be sure to testify, always, to the spirit of tomorrow,
And kiss me at this door of eternity,
Your hand shakes,
Djinns are all around us. Listen to the wind.
We will not be separated long, my love.