Straying

Only the stray can guide us.

Those who lost the proof will help us and lead us to what we cannot stand.

We- who know exactly where we are- wished we realized where they are.

We wished we were with them and like them so that we no longer know a name or a trace for what we are in.

At night,

there is no glittering lamp to show them the way out of the maze.

The stars at the heart of sky are their shining traps.

We always wished to be among them so that no one can have a look at us.

But, oh!

How preposterous!

Our desire itself is present and lasting and without any absence.

Because it knows its way very well and creates- even in our fondness to straying- a crowd of lasting viewers who look at us from there; from the absolute presence to see us while we are hopelessly lost in what we ignores.

No, this is not straying.

We are the captives of a dummy selfishness when we demand such a straying full of peace of mind.

Let’s confess.

We advanced in years.

We are caught by an early old age so we can no longer get astray.

In Paradise, as in Al-Rub’ Al-Khali⁽¹⁾, there are so many strays.

Only one of them destroyed his straying with his two hands when he recognized the tree of knowledge and brought us to here.

Adam! stay in your Heavenly big straying and save us.

What have you done father?

Look at your sons’ poverty;

they are fabricating small mazes to stray.

I am straying so I don’t, in the midst of straying, know who I am but what people say about me and my sex.

At the jinn and men of the world, I stray.

If there is nobody to stray at, I stray at myself.

What a disappointment!

We became able to know all the road

Yesterday,

I had the same nightmare.

I saw myself in the middle of a limitless forest.

I tried to stray but I couldn’t.

I was proceeding in the depth;

in the thick fathom,

but they were always able to find me easily.

Or, at last, I come across them without attention.

Their nightmare cunning smiles convinced me that I lost this amazing ability to hide, be absent and be named a stray.

I said goodbye to that Divine instinct.

I woke up depressed and remembered how I had been, in the Paradise of childhood, the quickest stray.

How often I get lost because of two cloaks ⁽²⁾; one of them is for my mother and the other is for a woman that drags me to Paradise in a market crowded with black cloaks.

I used to stray at the doorstep.

I used to get lost while gazing at a crack in the wall, so they call me and I don’t hear them.

Between the palm tree and the stairs I didn’t know where I am.

Being alone or with others nothing had been able to guide me.

But now,

all the world is pointing to me with its two hands, but you.

Where are your noble absent hands to take me with you,

you the stray?