If you want to enlighten the universe,
if you want to increase the light of this world,
all your body must turn into fire like the sun.
If you want the Sun of suns to accept you,
you have to melt and disappear
like the circle of the moon.
If your house is not clean and you are bored, get up and go.
If your heart is tender, don’t hang around with fools.
If you wear our mantle,
sometimes, you will fall into this confused Love.
Sometimes, you will fall from Love into disorder.
Sometimes, you will escape both and disappear.
It is much better, Indian, to give up Turks,
because to work and play whole-heartedly is for Turks.
To serve is for Indians.
Thank God I am a servant to a moon-faced Turk.
He is so beautiful that the Beauties of the heavens get their Beauty from Him.
When I called Him Turk, Love kept laughing.
In fact, He is the one who blows.
We are the ney.*
He is the one who plays us.
The helpless ney cannot make any sound
without the breath of the one who plays it.
Go to the cemetery and look at all of those broken neys.
The breath of the One who plays the ney has ceased.
There is no life, no talk left.
Our circumstances say silently,
“we” and “I” are all gone from us.
Come to yourself. Be silent.
Don’t put more wood on this fire,
Because I am afraid this fire will spread over the top.
*ney A hollow reed instrument similar to a flute.
Divan-i Kebir, Volume 16,Ghazal 198, verses 2366-2385.