FOR THE COMPANIONS OF THE WAY*

Khwājah Niẓāmuddin

Introduction

Come, let us take some step for the welfare of this ummah

and play life's game like a true man ;

we weep in the city's mosque so (bitterly)

that the Mullā's heart may soften.

(1)

Qalandar[1] is a white falcon of the skies,

heavy things weigh light on his wings;

he never hovers round nests, for

the whole bluish span of the skies is his hunting ground.

The song: Allah is He, issued forth from my soul,

and spread all around, like dirt from life's apparel;

hold the instrument from my hands, for its strings

have dropped down, like my tear, by the burning of the plectrum.

I pulsated like a tear, in the heart of Nature,

I pulsated — till I reached her eyes;

my radiance can be seen from her eyelashes,

for I barely drop on the grass leaves.

To me logic smells of unripeness,

its reasoning betrays signs of weakness;

two verses from the Master of Rūm or from Jāmī

open for me the gates closed in my face.[2]

Come and have from my hands that old (wine)

that imparts soul to the cup's clay;

if you water the tulip's[3] branch from my flask,

it would grow up to man's stature.

I hold in my hand the same old harp,

that enshrines lamentations of various notes,

but I play upon it with lion's claws,

for its strings are from stone's veins.

Tell the Parvizes of the present age on my behalf:

I'm no Farhād to take up an axe;

by a thorn that has sunk into my breast

one can pierce the heart of hundred Behistūn.[4]

I am a faqir, my whole asset is my insight,

to me other people's mountain appears as a straw;

take it from me : graveyard's crow is better

than a falcon accustomed to a king's hand.

I never shut my heart's door on anybody,

nor do I turn my back on friends and relatives;

I made my nest in my breast

and lived happily under heaven's canopy.

No position of honour do I have in this garden,

neither robe nor cap do I possess;

the gardener calls me ill-mannered,

for 1 bestowed sight to the narcissus's eyes.

A hundred wise persons spoke in this assembly

words more delicate than jessamine leaves;

but tell me: who is that sharp-sighted one

who, on seeing the thorn, could tell the garden's plight?

I'm not acquainted with the secrets of art,

yet I gave a new value to poetry ;

my songs and lamentations have lightened

the burden of the old aged people of the caravan.

Don't you think, I'm a bird of morning song

knowing nothing but lamentations and bewailings;

don't spurn my guidance, you will find

the key to the garden in my nest.

The world is only a passage for me;

amidst a thousand wayfarers, none is my boon companion;

I've passed by crowd of dear ones,

none is stranger than one's own kith and kin.

Learn to live in spite of many mishaps,

learn to highlight your value and worth;

throw yourself in the ocean of my song,

and learn to settle down like a pearl in my storm.

I was born and bred in this earthly abode

but have grown sick of my destination;

I have flowered the grace of her moisture,

yet I do not look upon the earth as my heaven.

Perhaps you're unaware — unless you enter into rapport with a Man

that hearts become alive through his breath;

he doesn't give vent to lamentations,

for Man's grief knows control and composure.[5]

Develop insight, look to the soul within the body,

see on the bough jessamine, yet to glow;

otherwise like an arrow in the bow,

see the target through archer's eye.

Intellect is unaware of certainty's delight;

is a bad companion, prostitution true wisdom;

two hundred Bū Ḥāmids[6] and Rāzīs are not worth

a simpleton that knows the Way.

What are fine linen, rubies and pearls?

what are handsome slaves and golden girdle?

what are as free of the two worlds as God Himself;

what else is the asset of the people of skill?

Khudī's intoxication of I-ness is the essence of sobriety,

my tavern therefore is not so noisy;

my wine, though not pure, yet you drink it:

it is the residue of yesterday's wine jar.

You are busy with your cap and dress,

I discovered the Beloved's smell by myself;

my whole asset consists of this one word of flute,

I need neither pulpit's wood nor that of gallows.

When I noticed my own mirror's essence,

I retreated to the solitude of my breast;

I took with me my old grief and ran away

from intellectuals, blind and lacking in taste.

When I departed from this earthly abode,

everybody said: he was our companion;

but none knew what this faqir said,

whence he came and to whom he talked.

(2)

If he is wise and pure of conscience,

he is rich, though poor and lacking in means;

costly apparel of the rich, who are devoid of dīn,

are but like pack-saddle.

(3)

You prostrate before Darius and Jamshed,

O ignorant! don't defame Islam;

don't beseech the Western man for your needs,

remove this idol from your heart's pedestal.

I listened to a verse from an old man

who was experienced, wise and enlightened:

if a faqir maintains himself safe in proverty,

the two worlds are within his grasp.

The secret of everything lies hidden in two words:

the station of Love is not a pulpit but a gallows;

Abrahams are never afraid of Nimrods,[7]

for fire is touchstone of raw incense.

O tulip! don't seek sympathy from anybody,

try to get succour, like me, from your inner self;

open your heart to every wind that blows,

keep alive the old mark[8] that you already have.

I remember these two precepts from an old man:

one should not live except through one's soul;

avoid a mean and low-born person

who bartered away his soul and lived by his body.

The restless wave said to the shore:

I judge myself through a Pharaoh;

sometimes I coil and recoil like a snake,

sometimes I dance to enjoy the experience of waiting.

If this pageantry of yours is borrowed from the West,

prostrate your head before none but her;

present your buttocks to her whip, for after all

the saddle-maker has a right over the ass.

The Westerner's heart is not subject to discipline,

his asset is all land, not dīn[9];

my lord, in the circumambulation of his sanctuary

there are a hundred Iblīses, not a single Gabriel.

(4)

You and I have lost all confidence in heart[10] and dīn,

have flown away, like rose's smell, from our roots;

our heart died, and hence our dīn also vanished,

we bought two deaths in a single bargain.

A Musalman who is aware of dīn's secret

does not prostrate before others than God ;

if the sky does not revolve according to his wish,

he makes the earth move to his wish.

This heart of strange nature is not of this earth,

its days and nights are not by the revolution of the skies;

you yourself determine the time of your qayām,

for the prayers of love and ecstasy have no adhān.

The station of yearning (shawq) is not attained without certitude and sincerity,

and certitude is not possible without Gabriel's company;

if you share of sincerity and certitude,

take your step undaunted, none lies in your ambush.

and referring to the secularist trend in Eastern countries, he says :

[By imitation of the West, they lost their identity,

they didn't see the link between State and Church.]

For the Muslim, this is knowledge and gnosis:

he sees manifest in his person the secret of laulāk;[11]

God cannot be comprehended through our intellect,

know therefore the one who declares: We cannot know Thee.

You threw yourself before Western idols,

how unmanly you died in the idol temple;

your intellect is unaware of the heart, breast. without ardour,

for you didn't drink wine from your ancestor's vine.

Not everybody is self-assertive and self-surrendering too,

not everybody is enamoured of self-assertion in self-abasement;

the cloak of lā ilāh is a bloody cloak,

for it does not fit well unworthy persons.

A mū'min burns in the fire of his being,

everything that is closed opens by his talisman ;

in his standing posture (qayām), you see Divine Majesty,

in his prostration, Beauty of Submission.

What do you ask about love's prayers?

A its rukū',[12] like its prostration, bespeaks of deep intimacy;

the fire and ardour of one Allāh-u-Akbar

cannot be contained in five prayers.

His Qur'ān recitation is an invitation to the two worlds,

Muslim becomes immortal through prayers;

one enamoured of the present age, that lacks ardour,

doesn't know what resurrection lies in prayers.

(5)

The West doesn't know the law of Divine Providence,

it gives to one, snatches from another;

it so provides sustenance to Iblīs

that God Himself is amazed.

No need to prolong this story,

I express hidden secrets in a word:

He gave His world to tradespeople

what does Iā makān know the value of makān?[13]

There is paradise for the pure of the Muslim world,

and for the people of resolution and ambition;

tell the Indian Muslim that he be happy,

for there is a paradise, free of obligation, for him, too.

Qalandar has no inclination to talk,

he has no elixir except this point :

no produce can be had from a desolate field,

that is not watered by Shabbīr's[14] blood.

Notes and References