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THE ILLUMINATI - THE SCENTED GARDEN OF ABDULLAH THE SATIRIST OF SHIRAZ

The Kiss of Consciousness, Human and Divine

XIX

THE CHERRY-TREE

I know a cherry-tree by Bendimir {FN1}
Whose blossom curves and sways upon the clear
Eddies of light; I have a cedar boat
Whose cushions are of dove's down; {FN2} let us steer
Under that tree and lie alone together
What time the West is grey, the stars appear.
Then you shall love me as a virgin would;
Shudder a little with a little fear,
But yield thy podex to my lotus-wand
Giving some smile twin sister to a tear,
Just as the body shudders {FN3} when the soul
Gives up to Allah, in its hot career,
Identity; impales its sunless self
On to the splendour of that sunbright spear
And laughs and weeps, not knowing what it does,
Entering the glowing rapture of the sphere
Where He is manifestly all; and all
He; where the I and Thou must disappear.
We shall not know if thee I sodomize,
Or if thou sodomizest me, my dear!
If beautiful Habib plays `kir' {FN4} or `kun',
And El Qahar the wise plays `kun' or `kir'.
Only we know that we in Him are dead,
And that the Far is buried in the Near.
Thus like a cherry-blossom is our life
Floating unwetted on the moon-white mere. {FN5}
It is no time to sing; for from the house
Comes forth the bride Habib, sans prince or peer;
Unique Habib, who walketh like a cat,
Sitteth, a swan, and runneth like a deer.
His face is like the moon that shines upon
The labouring Hajj, {FN6} its camel-throned Emir. {FN7}
For like a column of innumerous men
Doth serpentine his body; he is here
With hugs to break this breath, and with his mouth
To stop the mouth of El Qahar the seer.

{Footnote 1. A river which flows by the ruins of Chilminar.}

{Footnote 2. Cedar -- dove's down. By no means at random; symbolically chosen, or perhaps even because these substances have a reputed value in mystical practices. Apollonius of Tyana (? connection with Dhyana) was accustomed to wrap himself completely in a woollen garment in order to perform magic -- presumably with some idea of "insulation". Cedar is esteemed highly as incense. The passage may mean: "I will float heavenward on the perfume of my adoration, being insulated from the world by my love (or the Holy Spirit) under That Tree." i.e. the Tree of Life.}

{Footnote 3. Evidently refers to the physiological sensations experienced in some mystical practice -- perhaps Pranayam or one of its congeners.}

{Footnote 4. Kir -- membrum virile.}

{Footnote 5. This simile, like that of the lotus-leaf in India, is the invariable expression of the life "unspotted from the world".}

{Footnote 6. Hajj -- here used of the actual procession of pilgrims.}

{Footnote 7. The official leader of the Hajj, usually appointed by the Padishah.}

Free Will the reward of Union

XX

THE QAZI

If I had ever been angry with thee, O luscious-buttocked tulip! I would have forgiven thee for thy device upon this cow-bellied Qazi. I am repaid for my trust, permitting thee to receive his letter, and the go-between to pouch the hundred dirhams {FN1} thereof. For, supping with him, thou didst make him exceedingly drunk. Then, introducing Abdullah Kaffur, {FN2} that catamite of our grandfathers, thou didst present to the besotted fellow that poxy podex with its heaped haemorrhoids, like a well whose wall has been broken down.

Now therefore that ass-membered one -- Allah forget him! -- is very sick. Neither from his nose nor from his member will men be able to read that he is a Jew, {FN3} O beloved one with a nose like a rose-tinted ivory statue and a member like a young almond tree in blossom! for both are dropped off.

Beware, if thou ridest in the bazaar, that thou dost not hurt the good Qazi, the just one, the incorruptible one, the wise one, the merciful to the afflictions of the poor, {FN4} by stepping upon his nose or his member! Beware! sayeth El Qahar the seer.

{Footnote 1. Dirham -- a coin, equivalent according to Darmstetter to about 13s. 6d. of our money. But the word is used very loosely to imply a piece of money, so that 100 dirhams here probably stands for a shilling or less. Just so in India "rupee" means any coin. "Jahanpana ghulamko rupaiye dijiye". "May the Support of the Universe be pleased to bestow rupees upon (his) slave!" is adequately answered by any sum from a halfpenny upwards.}

{Footnote 2. Kaffur means Camphor, white wax, and is a lucus a non lucendo insult given to unusually black slaves.}

{Footnote 3. Though both Mohammedans and Jews are circumcised, there is a difference in the technique of the operation which would enable an expert to tell at a glance to which religion a man belonged. It is alleged by some that the toughening and hardening of the glans penis which results from the operation predisposes to sodomy, inasmuch as a greater intensity of friction is required to produce emission. True, but a moist and flabby vulva of gigantic size is poor fun for anybody.

Undoubtedly, a hardened tool does (in mathematical language) "flatten the curve" of rising excitement, and this is the secret alike of giving and receiving pleasure. The Hindu bayadere compares the average Sahib to a village cock, and the passionate Englishwoman jeers at her brutal and hasty husband for his "two-puffs-and-a-spit" performances.}

{Footnote 4. It is more than possible that the Haji had some unpleasant experience of the magistracy, or at least a personal spite against one of its members. For the symbolizing of Fate by human law is not so obvious to a Persian as to an Englishman: in Persia the defendant has plenty of free will, if he has plenty of cash. But our poet flourished no doubt in a Golden Age.}

God's constant affection

XXI

THE LOVE-POTION

Whoso hath fair Habib to sing and play {FN1}
May scoff at all the jinseng of Cathay. {FN2}
That naked podex knows a sacred spell
To exorcise the Jinn that bring decay.
One glance, one touch, and acorn springs to oak --
God sees the daystar, and invokes the day.
If Suleiman {FN3} with all his concubines
From dusk to dawn consecutively lay,
Yet at thy buttocks' velvet, O Habib,
The man would rise erect from mudded clay.
Bid thou the Qazi to thine house; I ween
That he would sprout a member on the way.
Or didst thou call upon him in the tomb
Isa {FN4} would rise, as silly Christians say.
Thy podex being his, thine El Qahar
Is always gold, and never rose and grey. {FN5}

{Footnote 1. The word used here is [Arabic] `hearing' and also "the song and Dance of the Mevliviyeh dervishes". Thus far Palmer; and I can learn no more. But probably the word is used to emphasize the purely religious nature of the passion.}

{Footnote 2. Chob-chini, wood of China, a root highly reputed as an aphrodisiac. In China the jinseng of Sze-chuan and Korea is most esteemed. That of America is not so good, in the fatherland-dizzied eyes of the Celestial. (See note to IXth Ghazal. Ed.)}

{Footnote 3. Suleiman -- our King Solomon, as historical as King Brahmadatta, who reigned 120,000 years in Benares.}

{Footnote 4. Isa -- Jesus. Muslim hold that a phantom was crucified in the place of Jesus. See Q'uran III.}

{Footnote 5. Gold -- noon, not sunrise or sunset, whose colours are rose and grey. A question of the clinometer.}

The Mystic Happier than his Fellows.

XXII

THE FOREHEAD-WRITING

On each man's brow hath Allah wrote his fate: --
Many are destined to frequent my gate!
They catch a glimpse of thee upon the roof: --
By fixed Necessity they masturbate! {FN1}
But thou and I are free, {FN2} as love is free;
We smoke and drink and smile, content to wait. {FN3}
The Zahid-sage is bound by dogma's chain,
Looks up and worships -- let the donkey prate!
The wine-drawer and his beloved boy
Unite above in the ecstatic state.
Nor doth the Sufi need a heaven in Heaven: --
Earth's heaven to who hath God to heart for mate!
And if at first thy virgin podex bleed {FN4}
He smiteth, for He is compassionate!
O Zahid, hear thou El Qahar {FN5} the wise:
"By love hate ends; hate never ends by hate." {FN6}

{Footnote 1. They who worship Allah give pleasure to themselves, but He profiteth not at all thereby. (Mahbub's comment).}

{Footnote 2. This doctrine of Freewill as the prize of Theurgy is curiously parallel to that of Zoroaster, "Theurgists fall not so as to be ranked among the herd that are in subjection to Fate." Lyd. De mensis. Taylor.}

{Footnote 3. Once union with God is attained, the whole of life (or perhaps religion) becomes pleasant.}

{Footnote 4. May perhaps refer to the "horror of great darkness" which comes, say the Mystics, to an Aspirant on the Threshold of Illumination. (We must beg students to observe that Major Lutiy seems to have written these notes in two moods, one in which he admits his own personal knowledge of, and identification with, mysticism; the other in which (as here) he writes as a mere scholar. Ed.)}

{Footnote 5. Obscure throughout, and the two last stanzas seem quite inconsequential. They may have been transferred from another Ghazal by some presumptuous scribe. A.L. Yet if so where is the Takhallus? Ed.}

{Footnote 6. Identical with a phrase in Dhammapada, the Buddhist "Book of Proverbs".}

The Mystic the true support of all religion

XXIII

MIRRIKH  {FN1}

Like Mars, red planet of the evening,
Rising o'er breasts of tender earth in spring,
So gleams thy podex, beautiful Habib,
My brother and my lover and my king!
For Mars is like a rose and full of fire; {FN2}
For Mars is like a serpent with its sting.
There is a pain, an ecstacy, a woe,
A joy, athrob within the wondrous thing.
The dull and boneless devotees of twat --
Leaves them to grovel; we are well a-wing.
Yet twitch that podex, like the wandering way
Of Mars within the everlasting ring. {FN3}
So shall my member, like the nightingale, {FN4}
Salute thee with melodious twittering.
I made thee famous throughout all Iran {FN5}
With these naughty Ghazals that I sing. {FN6}
In every caravanserai the boys,
As to their lords they fierce or langorous cling,
Cry: "Lov'st thou me, dear master, as Habib
Is loved by El Qahar the conquering?"
So, seeing man beloved of Allah, jinn
Aim at that bliss; their crowns and jewels fling
From star to star before the crystal throne,
And El Islam goes ever widening. {FN7}
To Allah praise! and El Qahar his slave
Taketh reward in offering thanksgiving.

{Footnote 1. Mirrikh. Mars the planet.}

{Footnote 2. I have often seen Mars -- in the Red Sea especially -- with its apparent diameter something like a quarter that of the moon, and its brightness sufficient to wake me, who am the soundest of sleepers. Thus seen for the first time it is a stupendous and astounding phenomenon.}

{Footnote 3. i.e., with a circular motion. The art of working the hips in coition, called by the Romans Ars Crissandi (Ars Cevendi in the case of a boy. Ed.) is in the East as complex and profound as that of music. It requires as much study as theology, and as much practice as billiards.}

{Footnote 4. An hardly obvious analogy. Boccaccio's use of it is a curious coincidence.}

{Footnote 5. Persia. Not to be confused with [Arabic] Iram, the legendary Paradise which Sheddad ibn 'Ad is said to have established somewhere in Arabia.}

{Footnote 6. That is, God has delivered the Means of Grace to all men; it is notorious. In one M.S. this ode ends here with the couplet:

"Deceive me not; for El Qahar thy Lord
Ripe is for cuddling -- and for punishing."

But this is very inferior, and would have to be transferred to the early part of the odes. Which the secret key-number forbids. Habib is by now far too high an adept to fall away from Grace.}

{Footnote 7. This is a very profane jest. Ostensibly, of course, the verse means that mystics are the salt of the faith. But Islam means "resignation" or "Submission". In wooing a lover your conquest is his submission, and your penis widens out his anus. The old sodomite is as keen to promulgate his vice as his religion, the dog!}

Ecstasy overcometh Individuality.

XXIV

THE BLASPHEMER

Hast thou never thought, O Habib of the athletic body, that when thou wrigglest thy velvet buttocks with immense vigour, and bitest hard with thy podex-muscle upon the member of El Qahar, that thou hast not remembrance of any circumstance connected with my personality or thine, but art completely absorbed in the act?

It causes me to remember an antient folly and blasphemy spoken to me -- Allah purify mine ears! by a certain Sufi, who, being excessively drunk, had lost control over his tongue. For he said that in a certain holy meditation both Allah and himself were destroyed, and that nought remained, but only the consciousness of bliss. {FN1} This is contrary to reason, for how can bliss exist, except as the quality of some person or sensible thing?

Nevertheless, these experiments which I have performed upon thy podex, solely with a view to investigating these statements, {FN2} make for a similar conclusion.

It is excessively annoying to the pious that any analogy in Nature to their follies should seem to supply a base for these wild and irrational theories.

It is the call of the Muezzin; but I must purify myself, for during these reflections thy podex hath been active upon the member of thine happy El Qahar. {FN3}

{Footnote 1. A mystical fact. The rationalist objection is put satirically.}

{Footnote 2. One of the few touches of satire in the work. But perhaps he is referring to the belief that Messiah is to be born of sodomitic connection. No doubt many Mussalmin would seduce boys on this transparent pretext.}

{Footnote 3. Before prayer the Moslem must recite a prayer of purification. If he is ceremonially impure, as after copulation or other bodily function, he must in addition wash the parts.

Excellent accounts of the two forms of both are given by Burton, Payne, Lane, Palmer, and others.}

The Atheist

XXV

THE ATHEIST

Nor thou, Habib, nor I are glad
when rosy limbs and swart entwine;
But when rapture drowns the sense and self,
the wine the drawer of the wine,
And Him that planted first the grape {FN1}
o podex, {FN2} in thy vault there dwells
A charm to make the member mad,
And shake the marrow of the spine.
O member, in thy stubborn strength
a power avails on podex-sense
To boil the blood in breast and brain;
shudder the nerves incarnadine! {FN3}
From me thou drawest pearly drink --
and in its pourings both are drunk.
The Imam {FN4} drives forth the drunken man
from out the marble prayer-shrine.
Blue Mushtari {FN5} strove with red Mirrikh
which should be master of the night --
But where is Mushtari, where Mirrikh
when in the sky the sun doth shine?
Now El Qahar to Hafiz gives
the worship unto poets due: {FN6} --
But songs are nought and Music all;
what poet music may define?
Allah's the atheist! He owns
no Allah, Sneer, thou dullard churl!
The Sufi worships not, but drinks,
being himself the all-divine.
Come, my Habib, the roses blush,
the waters gleam, the bulbul sings --
To pierce thy podex El Qahar's
urgent and imminent design! {FN7}

{Footnote 1. God -- not Noah. But the grape here means the physical basis of Ecstasy.}

{Footnote 2. The word used here is not [Arabic] but [Arabic] the square root (arithmetic). Possibly a pun with the word [Arabic] jazbat, which I have translated "charm". However there is (according to Mahbub) a mystic truth concealed. Arithmetic like all sciences was at one time considered magical by the vulgar; to this day the "magic squares" of numbers of which the simplest case is:

4 9 2
3 5 7
8 1 6

are attributed to the planets, and credited with supernatural powers. There is an Arab saying -- I think by Averrhoes -- "God is the square root of man"; and a certain very holy Fakir (only recently dead) determined to discover the nature of God by working out the square root of three. He is said to have engraved over a thousand pounds weight of thin silver plates -- supplied by the faithful -- with the minute characters of his calculations. At his death these plates were distributed and of course worked innumberable miracles. Should such a plate come into the possession of any Englishman, he will probably be puzzled; this note may enlighten him. The plate I saw -- but could not buy -- was some 18 inches square, nearly as flexible as platinum foil, and contained some 320,000 characters, at a rough estimate. The 1,000 pounds' weight seems to me an absurd overstatement.}

{Footnote 3. Refers, in all probability, to the reddening of the buttocks. The Persians supposed the smaller capillary blood vessels to be nerves.}

{Footnote 4. Imam -- a leader of prayer. Muslim have no "priests" in the sense of paid mediators.}

{Footnote. {FN5} Mushtari -- also Birijis [Arabic] is the planet Jupiter. Most nations seem to attribute a blue or violet colour to it; for mystical reasons, doubtless, but also because (to my eye at least) it actually has that color.}

{Footnote 6. I suspect, maugre Mahbub's head, that this is "writ sarcastic". The pompous old dullard must have seemed to our lively Abdullah very much as Southey did to Byron. Yet the Eastern is a terrible slave to convention, and may perhaps acquiesce in Hafiz as the undergraduate of today acquiesces in Milton.}

{Footnote 7. The central thought of these two chapters is represented in the Buddhist philosophy, perhaps; but in the Hindu practice, certainly. It is true that the Hindu claims the extinction of self in Parabrahm (Jivatma in Paramatma) as the phenomenon in question; but this is clearly a petitio principii, since we can always retort that any perception however glorious is less than the brain that perceives it. The Hindu would (idly) retort that this perception was not the phenomenon, but only one's very partial and imperfect memory thereof. And the logician would retort -- and we should soon get quite beyond the limits of a note.}

Ecstasy stronger than work of man or wrath of God

XXVI

THE TOWER OF SHINAR  {FN1}

On Shinar plain a tower was built
By man's ambitious fear and guilt.
(But Allah smote it with his fire: --
Who sees it yonder in the silt?)
But I have built a higher tower
Of love and fame for thee, o jilt! {FN2}
And yet a higher, {FN3} this member firm,
Fit for thy podex, an thou wilt.
Nor Allah smites it, nor the Jinn,
Until its pearly wine is spilt.
Come in the cool of evening
Beneath the figured goathair {FN4} quilt!
Then will I gallop through the vale
My spear at thy dijirid to tilt. {FN5}
Thy buttock-heaves to El Qahar
Are of his song the lively tilt.

{Footnote 1. This is the very same old fable we learnt about the Tower of Babel.}

{Footnote 2. Jilt -- the Persian has a coarser word -- our English "cock-teaser". But a translator must be allowed both latitude and modesty.}

{Footnote 3. Surely Oriental exaggeration. A.L. We cannot agree. The member is the Mahalingam, whose dimensions are only to be expressed in astronomical terminology. Ed.}

{Footnote 4. Goathair -- the "pashmina" of Kashmir; so says Mahbub the Kashmiri; but I suspect him of patriotism and believe the text to read `pustin' [Arabic] a fur pelisse, spread out as a quilt.
(Of course one may cavil at "quilt", which implies quilting, not any rug qua rug. But a wounded buffalo is a very mild animal compared to a translator in trouble with his monorhyme, so that we had perhaps better say nothing. Ed.)}

{Footnote 5. This perhaps refers to a posture of coition described in the other "Scented Garden". The lady is hung from the roof by a belly-band, while her husband (let us hope) stands on a stool, and swings her to and fro, catching her vulva from behind on his penis. This is continued until emission. The true sportsman refrains from guiding either the lady or his penis with his hands. The length of the swing should not be less than 4 or 5 feet; under these rules the game is excellent. With a boy it would however be incomparably more difficult, if not impossible. The text suggest though that the boy is fixed, while the man swings. This should be easier of execution.}

Ecstacy stronger than Death

XXVII

THE CAMEL RIDER  {FN1}

The camel-rider swoops across
the desert, with his howling Jinn,
To wreck and ravage human life;
insufferable Bedawin! {FN2}
But shall he ravish thee from me?
I see the camel check and kneel,
Vanquished by dread of the Unknown,
appalled by fear of the Unseen!
To Death is Love impregnable;
To Love seems Death desirable,
Fixing the lightning flash of life
and making permanent the scene.
The Zahid looks from Life to Death;
the Sufi gathers Death from Life;
They podex between 'twixt thy buttocks lies,
the Future and the Past between.
The Sufi pierces, gains and holds
the Present; can the present fade?
Never! through all the seas of time
fares on the prow erect and keen. {FN3}
The keel a member fit to pierce
the podices of ocean-lords,
Clasped to thy gushing bosom-waves,
o pearly amorous undine!
The `Maybe' and the `Letushope',
the `Allahknows; and `I believe';
The `Sweetitwas' and `Werecall',
the `Pitytis' and `Mighthavebeen': {FN4}
These founder in the rushing tide,
these bear a cargo black with fear,
Heavy with hate and dull with woe,
a miserable load of teen:
While we the `Jolly Roger' {FN5} sail
whose freight is fairy {FN6} pearls of dew;
The podex and the member locked,
without a bar, without a screen.
Remembrance and regret we quash;
we banish traitor hope and fear;
The present ecstacy is all,
the Middle Path, the Golden Mean.
And He endure, then love endures:
-- so El Qahar will ever sing,
Till he the world from mil of prayer
to wine of meditation wean. {FN7}
Like peacocks in a garden spread
our thousand eyes of jewel-sheen.
Though squawking with an eunuch's voice,
our paederastic plumes we preen.. {FN8}
For voice is sound, and dies with air;
light is co-excellent with God; {FN9}
As Hate's a poison for delight,
so love's a physic for the spleen.
And El Qahar is Truth, and nought
but Allah stuffs his gaberdine, {FN10}
And Allah windeth he about
with tarband gemmed {FN11} of gold and green. {FN12}

{Footnote 1. Death in the East rides a camel, not a white horse.}

{Footnote 2. Bedawin -- any wanderers. But the homeless necessarily live by robbery. Hence the paradoxes of Socialism.}

{Footnote 3. Lit. sharp as [Arabic] zu'l faqar, the sword of Mohammed which he captured on the field of Badr. A sort of Eastern Excalibur, by the unusual mythopoetic process.}

{Footnote 4. I confess to fantastic license in translation of this curious passage. But some of the words are not Persian or anything else, and two or three seemed me formed in this manner. For example, I have translated [Arabic] "Allah knows" reasonably enough; and [Arabic] Shayadistan, Perhapscountry, is well for "maybe", while [Arabic] "happy memory" justifies "Sweetitwas". But what shall I say of [Arabic] (?) [Arabic] and the rest -- mangled though suggestive roots? Possibly the poet knew very little about ships and their names.}

{Footnote 5. Jolly Roger -- again a coarse expression, best untranslated. The notorious debauchery of pirate ships, and the slang verb "Roger" (futuere) suggested the present phrase.}

{Footnote 6. The text would justify us in reading "rounded pearls" [Arabic] fairy (peri of Moore) and [Arabic] fullness. Where there was doubt, we have chosen what seemed the more poetical reading.}

{Footnote 7. Some MSS. end with this Takhallus. See Note 12.}

{Footnote 8. This and the following stanzas seem inconsequent. But they contain profound allusions. The thousand eyes of the peacock's tail are equivalent to the thousand petals of the Sahasrara lotus in India; the divine lotus that only exists as a throne for the descending Shiva upon his devotee. The eunuch's voice is the shrill sound heard by adepts at the moment of union with the divine. The garden is of course the sphere of the trained soul.}

{Footnote 9. This is a very literal translation; it is either an accident, or shows a high degree of scientific knowledge. The dependence of sound on air was discovered in Europe by Hawksbee in 1705.

(Hawksbee first performed the "bell in vacuo" experiment in 1705. Newton (Principia Vol. III 1687) gave an inaccurate formula for Velocity of Sound in Air and other fluids. Laplace nearly 100 years later corrected this. But we do not wish to stake El Haji's reputation as a prophet on this phrase. It is perfectly open to us to read "dies with breath" or "dies with mind" the root [Arabic] (Heb. [cheth, vau, resh]) meaning originally wind, hence breath, hence much later "spirit" or "ghost". The Latin "spiritus" and Greek [Greek letters: Pi-Nu-Epsilon-Upsilon-Mu-Alpha] have an identical history, the most complete case of metaphysical sophistication in language. The elavation of the Ruach Alhim (the wind of the elements), a poetic phrase for the actual wind stirring the surface of the unfathomable deep to life, to a Person neither made nor begotten but proceeding -- and the rest of it -- is a phenomenon unparalleled in the long history of human folly, especially when one considers the gorgeous way in which having got a ghost from a wind, they adduce the original passage as a proof that their forefathers believed in ghosts! The secondary use of [Arabic] to mean "mind" is however reasonable enough, and possibly the Yogic process is responsible. Early mystics (or psychologists) would naturally observe the extreme instability of the consciousness as its most obvious characteristic, and name it from the most unstable phenomenon in nature known to the primitives, wind. But why not Woman? Ed.)

{Footnote 10. V. 14 is the saying of Mansur el Hallaj, "I am Truth and in my coat is wrapped nothing but God". He was toned by more orthodox Arabs, and his blood traced "An' el Haqq" on the ground.}

{Footnote 11. Gem [Arabic] Guhr. The Fable of the Cock and the Dunghill probably sprang from so childish a source as the pun between Guhr and Guh [Arabic] (dung). It is more obvious in the oblique Guh-ra and Guhr-ra.}

{Footnote 12. The last three verses are probably spurious. Verse 11 supplies a natural end, with the takhallus. A.L.

(It will be observed that some of these notes are redundant. We have not altered or cut any of Major Lutiy's notes, though we have added a small number of our own. On the rare occasions of disagreement, we have added his initials to his note, and added our own view in brackets. Ed.)}

The Origin of Religion

XXVIII

THE POTTER

The dew is on the rose; behold
The sun illumine them with his gold!
My dew is on thy rose; what Light
Their love with rapture doth enfold?
They are immune from Life and Death;
From heat and hunger, thirst and cold.
The worn ascetics {FN1} of the mosque
Guess not what joy the ages hold.
Seek we the tavern and the stream,
The garden and the grassy wold!
No potter fashioned thee, o man!
`Tis thou that didst the Potter mold.
From Fear grew Hell, from Hope sprang Heaven;
From Love our Ecstasy untold. {FN2}
Those are delusions, slow to live,
This hath no death, the iron-souled.
(Therefore the podex of Habib
To pierce am I, thy lover, bold.) {FN3}
Only from the weariness of love
Was death's unholy camel foaled. {FN4}
Be this the song of El Qahar
In gold on ivory enscrolled. {FN5}

{Footnote 1. Ascetic. Zahid, indifferently to represent the fat easy-going, conventional materialist, self-styled orthodox, common to all religions, and the desperate devotee who does not set his life at a pin's fee when heaven is at stake. El Haji probably wishes to kill the two birds with the one stone.}

{Footnote 2. Another hint that all Religion is subjective; and that consequently mean men are Evangelical, gross men Roman Catholics, cowards believers in Eternal Punishment, sensual and sentimental men Universalists, and so on. Such a rationalistic view of the Genesis of Creed is uncommon enough in Eastern literature, though the general Fichtean positing of the non-Ego by the Ego implied in the previous stanza is to be found openly or obscurely in most sacred books.}

{Footnote 3. This stanza is almost certainly spurious.}

{Footnote 4. This is the old jest: "As long as you drink a drop of this medicine daily, you will not die." Though perhaps the erectio penis of the hanged man may give the lie to the jape.}

{Footnote 5. In fact, I saw a very beautiful copy so inlaid on thin sheets of ivory in the house of a very wealthy whoremaster.}

Ecstasy master of circumstance

XXIX

THE MIRAGE

Thou art perfect, Habib, in love; for yesterday when as a test of thy virtue I had thee beaten by the eunuchs, there was no cry of pain.

Entirely lost in our love, thy knowledge was only of my member, and not of the blows; nor could any application of the staves, however vigorous, take away from thee that delight thou hast in me.
Thou wast indeed unconscious of thy beating, crying only: "Press harder and deeper, O master!", though my member was entirely remote from thy podex, being engulphed in the ambitious and muscualr twat of a certain concubine with splendid breasts like erect members {FN1} so firm were they.

Such mirage, if it be mirage, is truer than truth, if it be truth.

Nothing can shake thee in love, any more than any affliction touches the Sufi. It is therefore of no service that I restore to thy sweet podex its accustomed guest.

Whether it be there or not, it is there for thee; {FN2} so that thou wilt never again bemoan thyself, saying: "Give me my Nubian! for without stiffness is the contemptible member of El Qahar the sage."

{Footnote 1. I have seen such women in Tehuantepec, Moharbhanj, and other places. But even an Englishwoman acquires the human figure if deprived of stays, and made to walk several hours a day for a number of months.}

{Footnote 2. A very convenient doctrine: all this -- (This note appears unfinished.) I wish one could teach it to the English wife, for ever on the groan as she is that she is neglected, and then crying out again when one gets her with child. The solution of the sex-problem is given in the Arab proverb, "Women for children, and boys for pleasure." I strongly advocate the putting of women in their proper sphere; they should breed, nurse, educate, and perform those physical tasks for which their coarser nervous system and lack of intelligence fit them. But no woman is a fit companion for a man; she of necessity degrades him. Luckily, in the case of the best men, she disgusts him. How many women have left any mark on history, save by the excess of their impudicities and whoredoms? We must exclude those born to queendom. I can think of but one, Jeanne d'Arc, an example of the opposite abnormality, frigidity.

XXX

THE SCRIBE

Wherefore, O Zahid, so afraid
To see the Maker in the Made?
Some one-eyed cripple hunchback built
You marble tower whose coolth and shade
Gladdens the lover. Take the fact
And leave the cause! What joy or aid
Springs from thy searches for the cause?
Thy cause thou dost to earth degrade,
Bounding its nature; shall Habib's
Delicious podex be displayed
To weaklings whose erection lags
For them to prate and make parade
Of tedious knowledge? Rather plunge
To scabbard the impassioned blade!
Throughout the summer to indulge
The sodomitic {FN1} accolade!
Forget, an if thou wilt, the scribe;
The lovely script to heart be laid! {FN2}
Describe the script? The scribe adore?
Perchance his podex is decayed.
The garden quit? Frequent the mosque?
By Allah, `twas an ass that brayed.
Allah, if Allah be, indwells
All beauty. {FN3} He is best repaid
By who loves jade as jade, nor asks
Some might Jaker for the Jade. {FN4}
Thy garden-podex wants, methinks,
Nor worship, but a member-spade. {FN5}

{Footnote 1. The Sodom-fable is to be found in the XVth chapter of the Q'uran. Moslems accept the Bible, so far as it goes. Only, they regard the Christian as the Christian regards the Jew: as one not up-to-date. Big fleas have small fleas, etc., quoth the bard; and the modern follower of El Baab and the Baha-i-Ullah says the same to the orthodox Muslim.}

{Footnote 2. An allusion to a well-known tale, perhaps to be identified in Alf Laylah wa Laylah. A chief returning from some expedition finds his favourite wife in the embraces of one of his sons. He reproaches her, saying: Am I not the maker superior to whom I made? (quoting, I fancy, the Q'uran) She replied that women might lawfully treasure the poem and press it to their hearts, but that it would be highly scandalous if they treated the poets in that manner.}

{Footnote 3. We are not inclined to regard the `if' as sceptical, but as a strong form of affirmation. "As sure as Allah exists, He exists not only in temples made by men for His worship, but in all the beauty He has created." This, at least, is the line of defence attempted by those orthodox Muslim who cannot quite forgive Abdullah -- or forget him.}

{Footnote 4. Taken by a parallel construction to Maker-Made. The absurdity is not so glaring in Persian, owing to the system of "modes" by which from each root is extracted a great number of derivatives, according to fixed rules. Thus [Arabic] Jade might become [Arabic] a maker of Jade, were only Jade a *verbal* root. As [Arabic] slayer from the root [Arabic] to slay. The Satire is of course against those who think that the difficulty of self-created matter is overcome by postulation a self-created God.}

{Footnote 5. The Takhallus being absent from this Ghazal, it is either spurious or unfinished; or else affords us a ground for rejecting those Ghazals which but for the Takhallus would be declared not to be authentic. This latter view has guided us to some extent in this edition. (There are altogether some 80 or 100 extant Ghazals of Abdullah; fortunately, in the keyletter we have a certain check on this particular series. Major Lutiy wrote his note under the idea of issuing the whole in a single volume. Ed.)}

The venality of the objectors to mysticism

XXXI

THE UNICORN

They say that in the deserts of Arabia there dwelleth a beast very like a horse, but possessing a great horn. Now I am not at all like a horse, though I am beautiful and swift, but I certainly possess an immense horn. {FN1}

Also there is a great bird which, when in danger, placeth its head within the sand, exposing its podex. Though, Habib, though otherwise not at all like a bird, dost expose thy podex, even when in no danger.1

I cannot but think that all this was in the mind of the Mullah, when in his sermon on Friday he reproached us openly with beastliness.

It is true that no beast does anything in the hope of receiving money; it is in my mind to take an hundred dinars {FN2} to this one-eyed dotard, so that the orthodox of Shiraz may speak of the beauty and chastity of Habib, of the piety of El Qahar, and of the great wisdom and tunefulness of his songs. {FN3}

{Footnote 1. The similes are very affected.}

{Footnote 2. Dinar -- a gold coin worth about 10/-.}

{Footnote 3. Evidently the reviewer is as old as the world.}

The contempt of the mystic for opinion

XXXII

THE BULL-FROGS

In ill repute of pious folk {FN1}
The Sufi seeth but a joke.
The traveller, passing by the mere,
Heeds not the frogs, but lets them croak.
So in thy podex I delight'
Nor heed at all what Allah spoke. {FN2}
While stands my member, blooms my rose,
Wine I can drink, or huqqa {FN3} smoke,
So long I laugh at Aflatun,
And fun at Aristu {FN4} I poke.
Thy buttocks with their splendid sun
This joy in me have ever woke;
In rapture alway El Qahar
His spirit is content to soak.

{Footnote 1. Pious folk -- Wahhabi [Arabic] the Muslim strictarians.}

{Footnote 2. Obscure. I doubt if the Q'uran forbids sodomy. See Q'uran XV, where the fault of the people appears to be their breach of hospitality, always a stigma in primitive communities. The Bible is just as broadminded on the point, both in the Story of Sodom and that of the Levite. May be "Allah" is a slip for "Mullah" -- a difference of only one letter.}

{Footnote 3. The bowl of the pipe is the sphere of the heavens; the tobacco is the benevolence of God; the live coal His glory and desire toward man; the water in the bowl is the veil which prevents man being burnt up in that glory, and the purifying influence of calm upon the soul; the smoke is the perfume of the Spirit of God; the tube is the Influence (Heb. Mezla), from on high; the mouthpiece the love of one's earthly teacher (this sounds as though Sufi confessors shared the predilections and privileges of Jesuit confessors); the inhalation is the enlightenment of the soul; the exhalation the holy influence shed by the Sufi upon his fellow men -- and so on.

Mahbub was perfectly willing to explain every phrase in the book on these lines; reasonable people will agree that a single sample is enough. But see note 1 on XXXVIIIth Ghazal.}

{Footnote 4. Aristu -- Aristotle. Most sensible men will heartily agree with these sentiments. El Qahar is more than mystic and sodomite; he is a practical person. But perhaps the unusual word huqqa is a pun on hukm (command) and the phrase means, "As long as I obey God's law, I care nothing for philosophy!" A.L.

I cannot admit that huqqa is an altogether unusual word; I think hukm rather merits that title. Besides, the pun is not obvious and less so to a Persian than an Indian at that. Ed.}

The falsity of the Orthodox

XXXIII

THE MULLAH  {FN1}

I have kept my dinars, Habib, to buy thee a new tarband withal; having reflected upon the case of the Mullah, that about his father we know nothing, while on the contrary about his mother everything is known. {FN2} For himself, since we know so much, none desireth to know more.

I think, however, that we will make him somewhat drunk, or even excessively drunk, and that in that condition we will lead him to the house of Fatma, where the old humbug {FN3} shall fornicate with the ugliest of the slave girls. Also setting him upon an ass {FN4} with his face to the tail, we will conduct him to the Qazi saying: "These, O Qazi, be brothers; but the malice of a wizard hath changed the elder and more foolish into the semblance of a drunken Mullah".

By this means will he become ashamed, {FN5} and prate no more of beasts.

{Footnote 1. This ode is by most considered spurious, or the work of a pupil on a skeleton left by the master. But the very stigmata on which this view is based -- the absence of the Takhallus, and of the word "kun" -- seems to us to point the other way. No forger would have omitted so simple a precaution. It is possible that the ode is incomplete. More reasonable seems the suggestion that el Haji {FN1} disliked the introduction of his holy word [Arabic] and of his sacred Name in an ode of this type -- as a kind of extra insult to the Mullah; {FN1} feared stoning if he signed it. The strongest argument for its genuineness is that the secret key-letter is right; if we cancelled the ode it would make nonsense of all the following ones. Unless, indeed, this ode *replaces* a genuine one. For which there is not a jot of a tittle of evidence.}

{Footnote 2. This is the boldest attack on orthodoxy that we have met in Eastern literature. The paternity of Islam -- its divine origin -- is said to be uncertain; the character of Mohammed, its mother, is vilified, the suggestion being that he received the Q'uran from all sorts of evil spirits; while of the religion itself he asserts dullness and inutility.}

{Footnote 3. The old humbug -- lit. this Saiyid of Samera. A Saiyid is one of Mohammed's own tribe; but at Samera there is an establishment for forging pedigrees, in all respects precisely similar to our own Heralds' College.}

{Footnote 4. Combined with the information in 31, that the Mullah is one-eyed, this suggests that el Haji wishes to identify him with [Arabic] dajjal, Antichrist, who is usually spoken of as a one-eyed man riding upon an ass. Thus he may mean: "The Spirit of Orthodoxy is the spirit of Antichrist". It would at least be in keeping with the rest of his opinions, and the symbol is lucid and keen.}

{Footnote 5. One MS. has "cornered" (shashdar shudan), a technical term in backgammon, when the game, though not actually finished, is seen to be hopeless for one of the players.}

Concentration

XXXIV

THE TALISMAN

Upon the Shah's third finger gleams
A ruby bright as summer's beams.
It hath a magic spell, men say,
To guard him from deceitful dreams.
Nor while thy podex grips my tool
Canst thou deceive me, boy, it seems. {FN1}
If other thoughts invade my heart
Of thee my heart but lightly deems.
As he who worships Allah {FN1} knows,
His Teacher light the fool esteems
Whose mind is occupied with sense --
And how the crowd of senses teems! {FN3}
But El Qahar doth love; collects
Into one ocean all the streams. {FN4}

{Footnote 1. This is the Rabelaisian jest -- the story of Hans Carvel's ring -- in Eastern dress.}

{Footnote 2. Again a confusion. He refers to the Sufi, not to the Zahid. (Teacher is a nominative -- fool accusative. Ed.)}

{Footnote 3. Anyone who has practiced even for a short time any of the Eastern systems of meditation will realize the force of this remark. No person who has not practised can realize how swift and numerous our impressions are. Under ordinary circumstances the great majority do not rise into consciousness at all, for one is occupied with one main current of ideas. But once the mind seeks to check all possible currents of ideas, the simple impressions rise into the vacant space, which is fairly bombarded.}

{Footnote 4. "Into one wave all the wavelets" is the Hindu equivalent for this. El Baab, when the orthodox took him out to be shot, having dug holes in his skin and filled them with lighted bamboo-shoots dipped in wax, is said to have observed: "These are many flamelets, and will soon expire; but my soul is One Flame, and will not." And there is a tale of an harlot, who retorted on some men who reviled her: "You are like the raindrops; but this my vulva is One Pool." They stoned her for the blasphemy.}

Devotion better than learning.

XXXV

ZEMZEM  {FN1}

These holy talks and scriptures, truth to tell,
Are foul to taste as Mecca's holy well.
Give me my boy's narcissus waist to hold,
His jasmine podex {FN1} to my raptured smell,
His rosy lips and coralline to kiss --
Well saith the sage that youth's sole heaven is hell!
A thousand times a night the Fatihah {FN3}
Did I recite -- my member did not swell.
Once for a night I slept with my Habib --
A thousand times that member rose and fell! {FN4}
Love and not worship is the key of life;
Silence, not prayer, the universal spell.
For while I knelt, how could I clasp Habib? {FN5}
And while I prayed, how kiss? Adorable
And perfect boy, thy podex serves alike
My member both to challenge and to quell!
So say the Sufis: Allah wakes desire
For Him, and grants it. Life is like a shell
That rouses echoes of some distant sea
To Zahid-lubbers all innavigable;
But the light-hearted Sufi thither floats
Breasting God's waves with Life for coracle.
So El Qahar defies the host of Fate,
Having thy podex for a citadel.

{Footnote 1. Zemzem. The holy well at Mecca. Its waters are excessively foul, and even the most devout make a wry face when drinking them.}

{Footnote 2. Jasmine podex -- surely a true perversion of sense! Yet the adjective is as invariable as pious for Aeneas and fidus for Achates.}

{Footnote 3. Fatihah, the first chapter of the Q'uran. To recite it 1,000 times nightly causes one to become a great Sheikh.}

{Footnote 4. Surely Oriental exaggeration. A.L. (Not at all. I do not think that El Haji necessarily means separate and distinct emissions; he may mean thrusts. Now even the uneducated Briton, with a little practice, can learn to retain his semen for 3 to 6 hours without withdrawl or prolonged rest. Allowing only four thrusts on an average per minute, it would require but four hours and ten minutes to fulfil these conditions. Ed.)

(True. I wrote the above without a copy of the text at hand. But the discussion will prevent repetition of my false conjecture. Ed.)}

{Footnote 5. Observe that the very idea of irrumation never once enters his pure mind. The subject of this peculiar vice is a very extended one. I think the orthodox Muslim probably fears the defilement of his mouth, or that of his lover. He would not object to being thus excited by a woman, who is already from crown to sole one mass of filth. Prejudiced as I am in favour of the Unfair Sex, I cannot but see this. Like Balaam, I am constrained. But if anyone wishes to argue with me, I may point out that -- it happened before. A.L.

Irrumation, with either sex, is perhaps the most popular of all the sex-perversions -- or sex-refinements? -- in the West. A well-known English peeress of American origin... ...has kindly favoured me with a classified list of the principal methods employed by the patient. It will be seen that they easily surpass the crude expedients of the Kama Sutra.

1. The Spider's Legs.
Tickle the penis with fingers, lips, tongue, and eyelashes.

2. The Fire-drill.
With flat palms rub the penis vigorously in a direction perpendicular to its axis. The tip of the penis is held firmly in the mouth.

3. The Mouse Trap.
Nibble and kiss the penis all over, like a mouse at a piece of cheese. Suddenly nip hard on to it and finish, like the closing of the trap.

4. Les affaires son les affaires.
Swallow the penis whole, rocking the head furiously backwards and forwards.

5. The Woodpecker.
Bite sharply with teeth upon the penis.

6. The Limpet (or Barnacle).
Suck the gland hard, so as to create a vacuum (this is a rude cupping process, causes the blood to flow strongly to the part and so is almost unfailing as a means of producing erection.).

7. The Oyster Supper.
Spit on the penis and catch the "oysters" until they are replaced by the "pearls".

8. The Green Corn.
Suck at the penis as you do to eat green corn (i.e. all down the shaft).

9. The Asparagus.
Suck at the penis as you do to eat asparagus (i.e. at the tip).

10. L'eternelle idole.
Worship the penis; rub it on the forehead, and so on, according to your ideas of what a ritual should be.

11. The Naughty Boy.
Smack the penis smartly with the hands. Afterwards make up to it, and pet it.

12. The sculptor.
Mould and knead with firm lips and fingers, as a sculptor models clay.

13. The catapult.
Pull down the penis, and let it flap back against the belly.

14. The Metronome (for two patients).
With tongue and forefinger at the root of the penis guide it, swinging it to and fro from mouth to mouth, one lover being on each side of the irrumator.

15. The whirlpool.
Swallow the penis whole, and roll the tongue round and round the gland.

16. Parfait amour. (Lady T -- has to say that she learnt this from Mlle. Marcelle of the house just off the Carrefour d l'Odeon, a Paris.)

Swallow the scrotum whole and rub the penis backwards and forwards across the nose. Excite at the same time the testes with the tongue and the fundament with the finger.}

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