Sufi Lyrics in the Egyptian Desert | Episode 13

The Be-Loving Imaginer

PODCAST #13: SUFI LYRICS IN THE EGYPTIAN DESERT

by

Martin Bidney

My month-long spiritual pilgrimage at the Sekem desert farming settlement in 2011 was guided by Sufi mentors in the Religion of Love.

I Poet Omar as my Sufi mentor. Medieval Sufi Omar’s most famous quatrain, from his Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam as translated by Victorian interpreter Edward FitzGerald, begins, “A book of Verses underneath the Bough.” This world-famed four-line love song introduced me to the SUFI RELIGION OF LOVE. I emulate the “Book of Verses” love song in these poems, where I shorten the Omar lines by one beat to sweeten the harmonies:

82. So went the caravan away

77. The courtyard – filled with leaves and blooms,

73. Our worldly life was at an end [a woman’s love for God]

63. The eyes that light the sky of her [a man loves a woman and God]

90. A vast and mighty [love of the Unnamable, my epigraph and epitaph]

I also love Omar’s lines beginning Myself when young did eagerly frequent and ending with the words I came like water, and like wind I go. This I emulate here:

69. Like water come, like wind I go [love every moment]

29. Now labor carefully to pay [theme of carpe diem, seize/love the day]

II My Medieval Mentors in Sufi Religion of Love

IBN ARABI 21. The curlew painted

RUMI 22. The theme of union

34. Of poet Attar, Rumi said

RABI’A 31. Just pure surrender – that’s enough

46. O Lord, I hope each worldly thing

III Shahid Alam as My Neighbor-mentor in Sufi Religion of Love

83-85 It is the month of Ramadan [legend of lifegiving love]

86 The coachman told: the glowing rose [miracle parable of love]

71 My friend, called Witness of the World [allusion to the Eastern Romeo & Juliet]