Kalbim Her Sûrete Açıldı

O doves of the Arak and Ban trees, have pity! Do not add to my sorrows by your cooing. Who will help me reach the gathering-place and the stone-strewn ground of Mina? Who will help me reach the place of the tamarisk, who will help me reach Nu'man? She circumambulates my heart hour after hour, out of love and anguish, and she kisses my pillars, just as the Best of Mankind circled the Ka'ba, which the evidence of reason claims is imperfect, and he kissed the stones therein while he was a speaking being. And what is the rank of the Temple compared to the worth of a human? One of the most wonderful things is a veiled gazelle, who points with fingertip like red fruit and signals with her eyelids, whose pasture is between the breast-bones and the inner heart. O, marvel! A garden amidst fires! My heart has become capable of every form: it is a pasture for gazelles and a monastery for Christian monks, and a temple for idols and the pilgrim's Ka'ba, and the tables of the Torah and the book of the Quran. I follow the religion of Love: whatever way its caravans turn, that is my religion and my faith.