The mind is a bondage to lovers and the ones on the journey, O son.
The road is clear, obvious if you break your ties, O son.
The mind is an impediment. The heart is a deception.
The soul is a curtain. The body is coarse.
The road is hidden because of all this heaviness, O son.
If you give up your mind, your soul and your heart, if you leave them behind,
it is possible to reach total understanding and see your way clearly, O son.
The man who has not gone beyond himself is not a man.
If it is not from Soul, Love is only a fable, O son.
Make your chest, your heart a target for the arrow of His order.
Know this well: That arrow is in His tight bow.
There are hundreds of signs on the face of a person
whose heart has been wounded by His arrows, O son.
Even if you climb to the seventh layer of the sky like Enoch,*
know that the Beloved’s Love is the strongest ladder, O son.
Wherever there is a caravan of courteous, graceful ones, pay attention.
He is the caravan master, O son.
His Love casts a shadow on the earth like a roof.
Love is His hunter in the sky, O son.
Love doesn’t need my interpretation, nor the interpretation of hundreds like me.
When Love tells the Truth, Love has hundreds of interpreters, O son.
Don’t ask for Love from me or from anyone else.
Ask for it from Love.
Once Love comes to talk, Love scatters pearls, O son.
Love is not the business of delicate people who fall asleep at the gathering.
Love is for brave ones, for wrestlers, O son.
The one who is a servant, a slave to lovers and Truth is a sultan,
the sultan of sultans, lord of a fortunate conjunction, O son.
This world is full of deceits and tricks.
It shouldn’t keep you away from Love.
Know this well: This disloyal world will run away from you, O son.
The verses of this poem don’t fit each other.
But, even if the curtains are changed, the meaning is the same, O son.
*Enoch is a figure in Biblical literature. “In the seventh generation from Adam,” he was considered the author of the Book of Enoch and also called Enoch the scribe of judgment. Wikipedia
Divan-i Kebir, Meter 8a, Gazel 67, Verses 589-603, Pages 124-126.