For more about the Sufi poet, scholar and mystic Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi, see this post.

He whom thou lovest is between thy ribs;
the breaths toss him from side to side.

He Saw the Lightning

He saw the lightning in the east, and he longed for the east, but if it had flashed in the west he would have longed for the west.

My desire is for the lightning and its gleam, not for the places and the earth.

The east wind related to me from them a tradition handed down successively from distracted thoughts, from my passion, from anguish, from my tribulation,

From rapture, from my reason, from yearning, from ardour, from tears, from my eyelid, from fire, from my heart,

That ‘He whom thou lovest is between thy ribs; the breaths toss him from side to side.’

I said to the east wind, ‘Bring a message to him and say that he is the enkindler of the fire within my heart.

If it shall be quenched, then everlasting union, and if it shall burn, them no blame to the lover!’

Tr. R. A. Nicholson