I Don’t Know What I Am
The beloved has stolen my peace away,
I can’t tell a heart from a heart at peace.
I became so drunk with love that I can’t tell
the saaghi (cup-bearer), from the win or the cup.
I don’t know what I am, or what I was in pre-eternity.
or, even whether I want to leave this state.
I was pushed and pulled here from many places,
not knowing the reason, not knowing the purpose.
I didn’t come to talk nonsense—
I came to distinguish between details.
I will cry Hu (He) in the beloved’s neighborhood till I die.
I say: “What is life? What is honor and disgrace?”
I’ve come to tend the garden of love,
not to close love’s bazaar.
Tell the one who denies love:
“What is it that welds us together from top to bottom?”
I haven’t come to make this world my home.
I’ve come from nothingness and will go back to nothingness.
I’ve come drunk, to become drunk, and leave drunk,
so that I can’t tell sherbet from poison.
I haven’t come to love every flower,
But to become the nightingale of a single flower.
The gardener roars and bellows in vain.
The nightingale doesn’t know a cage or a trap.
I haven’t come to be sad and melancholic—
I’ve come to play music and to sing.
I’m too smart to bend under the weight of sorrow.
Mazun says: “What is sadness, and what is grief?”
(S5)
