When the whip tore my flesh

And cut my face in two

I said:

Ya Mawlay

I am yours, for it is YOU that created me

My life belongs to YOU

Because YOU are

Its origin

I asked not:

Why doest THOU punish me?

For

One does not ask a lover

The reason for his love

I said:

My Beloved is greater

Than world and universe

For HE is love ITSELF

And I am love through HIS love

I said:

I am YOU and nothing else

I'm a dog and the universe

And Mawlat Shukriya

I said:

Man sheds my blood

But man

Does not own it

My sweet dark singing blood

I said:

Grant me YOUR ecstacy

And the majesty

Of YOUR beauty

I said:

Let me enter

Into the state of no colour

I said:

Let me taste

Of the flower of extinction

And know that the whip, too

Has no clour

And smile

At the suffering

It inflicts

Let the stone thrown at me

Be the markaba of MY glory

And humiliation elevation

Let this dog, o my Lord

And sacred Lady of Protection

Mock his own vanity

And then raise me

This sacred creature

Upon the throne of fana'

Suddenly

And undeserved

O sacred lover of my spirit:

Man knows of no greatness

But YOURS

Return in mercy unto him who betrayed

His

Own

Heart

O ecstatic Lord

My trance of old

Descend upon this Arab son

Of sea's desert

And Africa's earth!