Sufi Poetry for Today

The Beauty

For lovers, the only lecturer
is the beauty of the Beloved:
their only book and lecture and lesson is the
Face.
Outwardly they are silent,
but their penetrating remembrance rises
to the high throne of their Friend.
Their only lesson
is enthusiasm, whirling, and trembling,
not the precise points of the law.

Mathnawi III, 3847-49