What matters

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِي

Say Bismillah, In the name of God,
as the priest does with a knife when he offers an animal.

Bismillah your old self
to find your real name.


There are many people with their eyes open whose hearts are shut.
What do they see?
Matter.
But someone whose love is alert, even if the eyes go to sleep, he or she will be waking up thousands of others.


Hidden from all eyes and ears
let us tell each other of our soul.
Smile like a rose with no lips
and keep silent like a thought.

Let us speak silently the secret like Spirit
and avoid talkers who use words in vain.

Let us join our hands
listen to every flutter of our heart
let us become one in silence.

Divine destiny knows our fate
to the last detail.
Let our story be told in a silent way.

Fooled.. no more

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِي
In a poem titled Self-Portrait he says remembering the bayt-ar-Ridwan:

When half a thousand years and more
Had passed, and men allegiance swore
To the Arab Prophet, beneath the tree,
My willing hand was still not free
From bonds of time and space to be
Between his hands in fealty.

Such blessings missed, time was when I
Within myself would wonder why,
Half quarrelling with the book of fate
For having writ me down so late..
But now I no longer my lot
Can question, and of what was not.

No more I say: Would it had been!
For I have seen what I have seen,
And I have heard what I have heard.
So if to tears ye see me stirred,
Presume not that they spring from woe:
In thankful wonderment they flow.
Praise be to Him, the Lord, the King,
Who gives beyond all reckoning

(Collected Poems, Archetype, 2001 Sidi Abu Bakr Siraj-ad-Din a.k.a Martin Lings )