Here is a brief excerpt from Umar Ibn al-Farid’s Poem of the Sufi Way.  For more about the poet, see this earlier post, and for background on the poem, please see the introduction to this post. In the second verse below, Ibn al-Farid makes a reference to a well known hadith, or saying of the Prophet Mohammed, “The Garden is enclosed by hateful things, while enclosing hell are things of lust.” For no stable spirit ever won its wish; no soul loving the quiet life ever wished for love. Where is tranquility? Far from the lover’s life; enclosing Eden’s garden are hateful, horrible things. Yet I have a freeman’s soul; could you give it what is beyond desire to forget you, it would not be moved. It will not let go  of love, though it be exiled far away, shunned, forsaken, despised, cut off from hope. I have no way to leave my path of love, and if one day I turn away, I have lost my true religion.

Tr. Th. Emil Homerin