LOVE AND SEPARATION
In the heart, love is a flame, in the spirit a light.
Grief of separation consumes the lover, and yet even in gloomiest hours,
he never despairs of “spring”; journeying from desert to desert
amid bitter tears in ever-constant hope of the union he desires.
He weeps from deep within a heart like embers,
always alert and on the move as if chasing a gazelle,
drunk upon hope of the beloved who eludes him
and whom he finds again in his nightly dreams.
Phantoms of anxiety beset his spirit,
on his face now joy shines like sunrise, now sunset gloom;
at times the door is ajar on a far landscape just perceptible,
it’s colors and tones hinting Paradise.
A moment comes when despair overwhelms and hope seems unrecoverable,
and then another when dawn breaks in perfumed brightness.
At times he withers like leaves,
melts like candles, and his sobbing is heard from afar.
Even then, in never-ending autumn, the root of his desire flowers in hope,
he transforms the grief of separation into longing music,
makes deepest wells of sorrow brim with joy,
celebrating the immortality of Love.
In the deep wells of his eyes a meaning settles
from the eternal life and is present in his looks and smile;
his feelings sound the depths of eternity, the flow out
like soil-enriching river floods or fertile winds.
Whoever truly loves understands love is everything;
that it may be either fatal poison or elixir of life;
but whoever loves the Truth and pursues the ways to the Eternal Being
knows it as inspiration, as life.
a poem by Fethullah Ghullen
