excluding

Who am I excluding from my heart?

How can I fix that?

Seyh Galib – Love is a lamp of God, I am its moth
Posted: 14 Feb 2011 08:45 AM PST

Love is a lamp of God, I am its moth

by Seyh Galib

English version by Bernard Lewis

Love is a lamp of God, I am its moth;

love is a shackle, my heart is its crazy captive.

Since becoming a sharer in the secret of your

glance
my heart became a friend of the friend, a stranger
to the stranger.

Making no difference between dry piety and

endless carouse –
such is the libertine way of the masters of ecstasy.
The black soil of the reveler’s world is full of
abundance,
the sun of wisdom rises in the tavern jar.

He drinks the wine mingled with poison of the

glance of those eyes;
I could be tipsy from the languor of those blue
eyes.

Take care, do not neglect that sleeping dagger,

its tale is always the gossip of death.

Galib, enter the secluded palace of pleasure and

see its secret,
the wise way of the daughter of the vine is
something else.

— from Music of a Distant Drum: Classical

Arabic, Persian, Turkish & Hebrew Poems,
Translated by Bernard Lewis
/ Photo by Jessica.Tam /

This poem, like much of Sufi poetry, uses a

language of the profane to describe oneness with
God as the Divine Beloved. Galib speaks of revelry
and carousing, of taverns and “the daughter of the
vine.”

It is partly because of these sorts of metaphors

that uptight Victorian Europe chose to view the
Muslim world as one of licentiousness and excess
— quite the opposite of the modern Western
prejudice that imagines all Muslims to be religious
extremists. Both perspectives represent a profound
misunderstanding of the deep wisdom being
expressed through this sort of language.

Wine, as I have said elsewhere, is a common

metaphor for the subtle and “intoxicating” drink of
bliss. For many mystics it is an actual sensory
experience that is sweet on the palate and warms
the heart. The resulting flood of energy in the body
can be so intense that it often causes trembling or
even jerking body movements, occasionally
unconsciousness, suggesting drunkenness to a
spectator.

the sun of wisdom rises in the tavern jar.

But it is in the wine glass, the “tavern jar,” that the

“sun of wisdom rises.” By immersing oneself in that
ecstasy, false concepts are washed away and true
knowing emerges.

This image of a cup or glass containing the sun has

even more meaning for Sufis — it is an evocation
of the Muslim symbol of the star and crescent.
Picture in your mind the rim of a glass catching the
light — that is the crescent — and within it is held
the star or sun. One way Sufis understand this
symbol is that the star is the dawning light of
enlightenment, and the crescent is the rim of the
glass of bliss-bestowing wine. (The crescent is also
the rim of the sky and the open boundaries of the
heart… giving us enlightenment within the
individual soul and within the world of being.)

He drinks the wine mingled with poison of the

glance of those eyes;
I could be tipsy from the languor of those blue
eyes.

As in many sacred traditions, the Sufis often

describe the interaction between the ego-self and
the Divine as a game of love. Thus, Galib writes of
eyes that make the “reveler” tipsy. A glance from
those eyes causes him to drink “wine mingled with
poison.” Why poison? The wine of divine union
awakens sweet ecstasy, but because such a divine
glance leads to the death of the ego, that
sweetness is also likened to poison. When we
finally notice the Beloved’s glance — poof! —
suddenly only the Beloved remains!

Galib, enter the secluded palace of pleasure and

see its secret,
the wise way of the daughter of the vine is
something else.

This is what it means to truly enter the “secluded

palace of pleasure.” But are we ready to see its
secret?

Seyh Galib
Turkey (1757 – 1799)
 Timeline
Muslim / Sufi
Seyh Galib, also known as Galib Dede, was born in
Istanbul. His father was a government official with
some connection to the Mevlevi Sufi order, the
order of “whirling dervishes” founded by Rumi.

Galib attempted to combine a government career

with the interior life of a Sufi, but he eventually
turned his focus wholeheartedly to the spiritual life,
becoming the sheikh of the Mevlevi order in the
Galata district of Istanbul.

By this time he was already famous for his poetry,

known even to Sultan Selim III, who was a patron
of poets. Galib composed a divan (collection) of his
poetry and a poetic allegory called “Beauty and
Love.” He is considered to be the last of the great
classical Ottoman poets.

More poetry by Seyh Galib