Mansur al-Hallaj was a Persian mystic, poet and teacher of Sufism. 

Born: 26 March 858 AD,  Fars, Persia

Died: 26 March 922 AD,  Baghdad, Mesopotamia

 

Goodbye my Sufi friend and lover

Nothing exists now to connect you to me

You are safe from the executioner's block.

Tayyar is honourable and full of good intent.

I will soon rise from the trap of this world.

I ask you to be my servant in paradise

You will be my dancer, I your poet.

On some days I taste the rain-clouds

That drift as you sew

I watch you, and fall in love.

I remember our first meeting

Amongst the sweet smell of the jasmine

In the rose garden where we couldn’t be

Seen or overheard. You were my perfumed

Idol. You were my window on eternity.

When Mansur Al-Hallaj was finally executed

For the blasphemy of being a Sufi I knew

My time would come. The Abbasids do not

Forgive. On this tight night of bone-white

Light I do not think of death. The Day of Death

Will come for everyone. 

This wine from Al-Andalusia is sweet and clear,

Like a mirror

Or a still lake,

I see us now clear and calm.

Unaffected by the ripples that draw near

To this day of rumbling dark clouds,

Skies swirling and whorling on this day of days.

I am not an unbeliever. Equally,  I know 

There are many truths.

I was accused of paganism for reading Greek.

Herodotus, the father of History, did not seek to

Write a Greek version of the Greco-Persian wars

He sought to learn from past conflicts.

Herodotus attributes the causes of war

To both divine and human agents,

Wisely, in those days, not  perceived as mutually exclusive,

But rather mutually interconnected.

Will this day of rumbling thunder never be done?

Be sure to testify to the spirit of tomorrow,

Kiss me at the door of eternity,

Your hand shakes,

Djinns are all around us. Listen to the wind.

We will not be separated for long, my love.