Judge a Moth by the Beauty of Its Candle

You are the king’s son.
Why do you close yourself up?
Become a lover.

Don’t aspire to be a general
or a minister of state.

One is a boredom for you,
the other a disgrace.

You’ve been a picture on a bathhouse wall
long enough. No one recognizes you here, do they?

God’s lion disguised as a human being!
I saw that and put down the book
I was studying, Hariri’s Maqamat.

There is no early and late for us.
The only way to measure a lover
is by the grandeur of the beloved.

Judge a moth by the beauty of its candle.

Shams is invisible because he is inside sight.
He is the intelligent essence
of what is everywhere at once, seeing.