The language of the heart

I just got back a book which I had lent to a friend – I’ve really missed it. It’s The Conference of the Birds by Attar. At this stage I think it’s my all-time favorite book.

I much prefer Attar to Rumi and the other poets I’ve read, probably because I understand what he’s saying the most (I just don’t get Rumi, most of the time). I’m reading all of this in English of course, so the quality of the translation probably has a lot to do with it.

Whoever drinks the mystics’ wine is king
Of all the world can show, of everything –
Its realms are specks of his authority,
The heavens but a ship on his wide sea;
If all the sultans of the world could know
That shoreless sea, its mighty ebb and flow,
They’d sit and mourn their wretched impotence
With eyes ashamed to meet each other’s glance