but he is more inclined toward the total experience, with its dialogic
dimension that captures both the ecstatic and the real. In one gift or benefit,
the poet speaks through the Sufi mask:
I laugh like fear, so my ear let you
Hear the ghosts
For I laugh in fear, hungry
I pass behind the tree
My caravan is the sea, with its belongings
On wind I lean.In another offering, the poet speaks in the voice of another Sufi, perhaps Bishr
al->mfl(the barefoot) of Marw and Baghdad (d. 150/767 or 152/769), whose
cognomen “the barefoot” may derive from the Qur’mnic verse, Sura 59: 19,
“And God made the earth your carpet.” “So, how can a human step onto
God’s carpet wearing shoes?” said the Sufi:
I own my shield I own the bloodstained spear
So why is my body thrown on the ground in neglect?
You “Xalmyln al-‘Ajam” (Sultans of non-Arabs),
Who is standing in my wounds, dragging shoes
In my deep injuries?
I refuse to let my wounds be canals
Emptied of waters
To become a passage for wallowers
You, the face who left me
Can you run away without me?
I refuse to be an insult
Do not burn my wounds
Do not singe the remains of wax in it.‘Azlz al-Sayyid Jmsim draws attention to this intentional confusion between
the immediate experience of the speaker and the Sufi subtext (Ibid. 162).
While reaching into Sufi sublimations, the poet achieves “the face of it
through exertion, merely the side of the self which is inseparable from every-
day experience. Hence, the aspirations of the poet and his transgression of
veiling stand for his completeness, as a harmonious blending with the self,
with its failures and inner struggles” (Ibid. 163). Thus, he concludes, the poet
“does not submit to the supreme vision (the original and the first ancient
one), for he is an amateurish practitioner, not living yet total infatuation or
ecstasy, for the state of utter transfiguration and fusion invites no explication.
Language itself is drawn to its reality, its emanations, and cannot therefore
reflect a total visionary attachment to absence, for language is no more than
CONCLUSION: DEVIATIONAL AND REVERSAL POETICS