This description rules only here;
there its very entity vanishes and departs.
One ardent lover says:
I weep with longing when they go far, and weep with fear of parting when they draw near.
Longing grows still at meeting: it is the heart’s surging toward an absent one, becoming still when he arrives. Yearning is a movement the lover finds when meeting his beloved, through joy in him. He cannot reach the limit of his ecstasy in him—if he reached it, he would grow still—because he is never sated with him. Sense cannot fulfill the self’s attachment to the beloved. He is like one drinking seawater: the more he drinks, the thirstier he grows.
He, peace be upon him, said, “Two greedy seekers are never sated: a seeker of knowledge and a seeker of this world,” insofar as each loves to attain one of them. Knowledge has no end to reach, so he is never sated.
Likewise this world is what selves desire, and desire seeks it. The desired thing appears in a near form called dunyā, this world, and desire attaches to it. Then it passes to the Hereafter in the Garden, and desire follows, never sated, for it is a form whose term is endless. Without desire the Garden would not be pleasant. Longing is what has grown still, and yearning is
Notlar
Translator’s note TN4788-1: Dunyā, this world, is connected here with a near form, qarībah. The endless object of desire passing to the Garden is distinguished from longing’s becoming still through meeting. The poem’s “here” and “there” remain unstated locations in the source.
