For Mevlana (III)

(or, Love, Harmony and Beauty)

Words, like bears, must hibernate under a wintry blanket

     so they can emerge ready and strong 

                      in the springtime of their revelation

                               and strike squarely on the first blow.

Beauty, the most described thing of all,

    can no more be described than can truth -

           for like truth it is no thing,

                            but living.

In every face I greet my Self,

          for beauty is realized in the strangest ways . . .

                          if I love women

               it is only because they are women;

          if I love men it is only because I am one.

And if pondering my own face I find only beauty,

                 then I am in love with the Friend.

                     It cannot be otherwise.

Inside beauty there is love and harmony,

inside each are found its two companions.

             Without intimate knowledge

             the names we've given them are stale -

                    and within that intimacy

                     names are not needed.

Convention kills, behind every word

        is self-conscious thought.

          Then scrape the words off the page

              and see beauty face to face,

                     describing itself . . .

         Beauty, like silence, meditates on you,

                       restoring joy;

                  you break it in song

                        irresistable

              because you are human.

        And I love this human being.

S. Inayat-Chisti, Berlin, Oct. 1994