Self

A Sufi said to me in dreams:
Behold! from Sodomite to Peri
Earth tablets us: man lives and is
Man’s own long commentary.

Is one begat at Bassora,
One lies at Damietta dying--
The plausibilities of God
All possibles o’erlying.

But when lust burns within the flesh--
Hell’s but a homily on Heaven--
Put then the individual first,
And of thyself be shriven.

Neither in adamant nor brass
The scrutinizing eye records it:
The arm is rooted in the heart,
The heart that rules and lords it.

Be that it is and thou art all:
And what thou art so hast thou written
Thee of the lutanists of Love,
Or of the torture-smitten.