O Allah, You orchestrate meanings within me as a child plays, constantly shifting and evolving; if You desire this endeavor to be completed, ease my path, grant success, or remove this yearning from my heart and do not reproach us. If You inspire the impoverished with a need for gold, O generous Sultan, bestow it upon them secretly.
What value can rhyme and meter hold, what worth in these verses that arise, without Your presence, without Your gracious favor? O wise Sultan, both rhyme and wordplay are servants to Your command, trembling in reverence. You have made all things a form of remembrance (tasbih), and those with reason and discernment remember You, as do those without.
Each possesses a unique form of tasbih; one is unaware of the other’s state! Humanity denies that inanimate objects perform tasbih, yet these things are masterful in their servitude. Indeed, each of the seventy-two nations is ignorant of the others’ condition, all shrouded in doubt.
If two people speaking to one another remain unaware of each other’s state, how can a wall and a door understand one another? If my heart neglects the tasbih of the speaker, how will it perceive the remembrance of something silent and without sound? The Sunni is ignorant of the tasbih of the Jabri.
And the Jabri does not perceive the tasbih of the Sunni. The Sunni possesses a particular tasbih; yet, the Jabri has one that is its opposite, to which he seeks refuge. It repeats, “He has strayed, led astray!” Yet, it knows nothing of his state, nor of the command, “Be!”
It also says, “What does he know of the truth?” Allah has decreed and cast them into conflict, thus revealing the essence of each. It manifests from one who is not of that lineage. Everyone distinguishes between constraint (qahr) and grace (lutuf), whether knowledgeable or ignorant, superior or inferior.
But few understand the grace hidden within constraint, or the constraint concealed within grace—unless they are a sincere seeker (‘arif) with a burning heart belonging to Allah. Others cannot comprehend the grace hidden in constraint nor the constraint veiled in grace; they remain in doubt. They are like birds attempting to reach their nests with a single wing.