Attar and the Reed Flute

[Guest guest]

Dear Friends,

 

Recently it was posted about the Sufi's way, about Irina Tweedie, and

something about suffering in context to Sufism. Here is a most

powerful poem by Attar, called "Listening To The Reed Flute."

 

There's a blind man on the road saying,

Allah, Allah. Sheikh Nuri runs to him,

"What do you know of Allah? And if you know,

why do you stay alive?" The Sheikh keeps on,

beside himself with ecstatic questions.

Then he runs into a low place, where

a reedbed has recently been cut down.

 

He falls and gets up, falls again,

floundering on the sharp reed-ends.

People come and find him dead, the ground

wet with blood and written on every reed-tip,

the word Allah. This is the way one must

listen to the reed flute. Be killed

in it and lie down in the blood.

 

Fariduddin Attar, along with Sanai, were considered his poetic

masters by Rumi. Attar was a perfumist by trade, a doctor by

vocation, and a poet by nature. He was born in Nishapur in 1119. At

the end days of Attar's life, he met the boy, Jelaluddin Rumi, and

recognizing the essence, he embraced him and gave him a book

called "Asranama," abook about the entanglements of the soul in the

material world. Attar is best known by his work, "A Conference of

Birds."

 

Love,

Mazie