Imam Khomeini’s poetry contains deep insightful, wisdom, vision and treasures of mysticism
The Account of Perplexity
I want the pain, not the drug.
I want the anguish that sticks in the throat,
not a pleasant melody.
I am a lover, I am a lover, I am your patient;
I don't want to be healed from this.
I would even pay for your cruelty for my soul;
I don't want to abandon this cruelty.
From you, my beloved, cruelty is fidelity,
So, I don't want any other fidelity,
You are both my Safa and my Marwa;
I don't want Marwa with Safa.
The Sufi has no news about the union with the Friend.
I don't want a Sufi without Safa.
You are my supplication and my remembrance;
I want neither remembrance nor contemplation nor supplication.
In whatever direction I turn, you are my qiblah.
I want no qiblah nor that which shows its direction.
Whoever you gaze upon becomes your sacrifice.
I am the sacrifice, I don't want any sacrifice.
Every horizon is enlightened by your visage,
You are manifest, I don't want a mere trace of you.
Ordibehesht 1366 AHS
[April-May 1987]
Explaination
This poem reminds one of the lines of Baba Tahir:
Some want the drug, some want the pain,
Some want union, some want separation,
I am not of those who want the drug, the pain, union or separation.
I want what the beloved wants.
The idea expressed in this poem is that even in the hiddenness of God, He is manifest to the true lover.
The very hiddenness itself becomes a mode of manifestation. The pain which is described in the first eight lines is the pain of the lover, the longing for union with the divine. The cruelty is the experience of this longing caused by the need for union.
The word translated as 'cruelty' here, jafa', indicates the kind of torment a mistress may inflict upon her lover, as by withholding her favors. The lover wants this cruelty, because he wants to feel the union with the divine.
He wants no other fulfillment of any promise by God except that he should be so favored as to feel the need for union with Him.