1
Your love has wrested me away from me,
You're the one I need, you're the one I crave.
Day and night I burn, gripped by agony,
You're the one I need, you're the one I crave.
I find no great joy in being alive,
If I cease to exist, I would not grieve,
The only solace I have is your love,
You're the one I need, you're the one I crave.
Lovers yearn for you, but your love slays them,
At the bottom of the sea it lays them,
It has God's images—it displays them;
You're the one I need, you're the one I crave.
Even if, at the end, they make me die
And scatter my ashes up to the sky,
My pit would break into this outcry:
You're the one I need, you're the one I crave.
Let me drink the wine of love sip by sip,
Like Mecnun, live in the hills in hardship,
Day and night, care for you holds me in its grip,
You're the one I need, you're the one I crave.
"Yunus Emre the mystic" is my name,
Each passing day fans and rouses my flame,
What I desire in both worlds is the same:
You're the one I need, you're the one I crave.
2
Knowledge should mean a full grasp of knowledge:
Knowledge means to know yourself, heart and soul.
If you have failed to understand yourself,
Then all of your reading has missed its call.
What is the purpose of reading those books?
So that Man can know the All-Powerful.
If you have read, but failed to understand,
Then your efforts are just a barren toil.
Don't boast of reading, mastering science
Or of all your prayers and obeisance.
If you don't identify Man as God,
All your learning is of no use at all.
The true meaning of the four holy books
Is found in the alphabet's first letter.
You talk about that first letter, preacher;
What is the meaning of that—could you tell?
Yunus Emre says to you, pharisee,
Make the holy pilgrimage if need be
A hundred times—but if you ask me,
The visit to a heart is best of all.
3
In case my Friend does not return to me,
Then let me return to the Friend's embrace;
I'm willing to suffer pain and torture
If that is how I can see the Friend's face.
A handful of dust was my stock in trade,
And love took even that away from me:
Now I have no capital left nor shop.
What use is going to the market place?
The Friend has His nice shop, neatly set up;
Cheerfully He walks around in that shop.
But my heart cringes, my sins are countless;
Humbly I must go implore the Friend's grace.
My heart declares: "The Friend belongs to me."
My eye declares: "The Friend belongs to me."
My heart urges my eye to have patience,
Yearning to receive news, to keep pace.
We must accept those who have looked at God
As sharing God's life, as one and the same.
If a person has received the blessing
Of God's vision, he is beyond disgrace.
4
While I was roaming the wide world
I came upon nations in graves:
The mighty and the meek lay there—
Among them awe-inspiring braves.
Some were old men, some young heroes:
Viziers, teachers—everyone goes;
Their days now caught in the night's throes,
Here they lie with death's other slaves.
The path they took was always straight;
Pen in hand, they knew how to write;
Their tongues, like nightingales, sang right;
Buried they lie—sages and braves.
Mighty and low, everyone cried
When these heroic leaders died;
A broken bow at each graveside—
Gallant men fell like stray arrows.
Their horses unfurled a dust cloud,
Drummers marched by them, beating loud,
Their might had done land and sea proud;
Noble lords now lie in death's caves.
5
If you break a true believer's heart once,
It's no prayer to God—this obeisance,
All of the world's seventy-two nations
Cannot wash the dirt off your hands and face.
There are the sages—they have come and gone.
Leaving their world behind them, they moved on.
They flapped their wings and flew to the True One,
Not like geese, but as birds of Paradise.
The true road doesn't ever run awry,
The real hero scoffs at clambering high,
The eye that can see God is the true eye,
Not the eye that stares from a lofty place.
If you followed the never-swerving road,
If you held a hero's hand as he strode,
If doing good deeds was your moral code,
You shall get a thousand to one, no less.
These are the moving facts that Yunus tells,
Where his blend of butter and honey jells,
Not salt, but jewelry is what he sells—
These goods he hands out to the populace.
6
Go and let it be known to all lovers:
I am the man who gave his heart to love.
I turn into a wild duck of passion,
I am the one who takes the swiftest dive.
From the waves of the sea I take water
And offer it all the way to the skies.
In adoration, like a cloud, I soar—
I am the one who flies to heavens above.
He who says he sees, doesn't, though he vows;
That man doesn't know if he claims he knows.
He alone is the One who knows and shows.
I am the man who has become love's slave.
For true lovers, this land is Paradise;
Those who know find mansions and palaces;
Wonder-struck and adoring like Moses,
I remain on Mount Sinai where I thrive.
Yunus is my name, I'm out of my mind.
Love serves as my guide to the very end.
All alone, toward the majestic Friend
I walk kissing the ground—and I arrive.
7
I am warned by the dervish way—
You cannot become a dervish.
Come, if you wish, what can I say?
You cannot become a dervish.
The dervish chest must be cut deep,
His tearful eyes ready to weep;
He must be as docile as sheep.
You cannot become a dervish.
When slapped, he must not raise a hand;
Sworn at, he must not reprimand;
From his heart desires must be banned.
You cannot become a dervish.
You use that tongue of yours to sing,
Recite verses full of meaning;
You rage against this thing, nothing.
You cannot become a dervish.
If anger exists, if it's true,
Muhammad would have felt it too;
So long as you have wrath in you,
You cannot become a dervish.
Unless your road to truth runs straight
And you get soon to your Guide's gate;
Unless it's your God-ordained fate,
You cannot become a dervish.
Now come along, Dervish Yunus,
Come, dive into the boundless seas;
Unless you plunge in the oceans,
You cannot become a dervish.
8
Whoever receives the gift of the dervish state
Is cleansed, rid of counterfeit, gets his silver-plate.
He's that tree whose breath oozes musk and ambergris,
From whose branches, city and country get their fruit.
Those who are suffering find their cure in its leaves;
In its shadow so many good deeds are afoot.
A lake is born of the teardrops of the lover;
Reeds and bushes sprout and blossom at that tree's feet.
Poets are the nightingales in the Friend's garden;
Yunus Emre is the singing partridge in it.
9
I climbed to the branches of a plum tree,
And I helped myself to the grapes up there.
The owner of the orchard scolded me:
"What are you devouring my walnuts for?"
He made me into a thief—that was wrong:
So, in turn, I hurled slanders at him too—
And the peddler asked when he came along:
"You were to marry my daughter, weren't you?"
I dumped sun-baked mud into the cauldron
And boiled it together with the North Wind.
"What on earth could this thing be?" asked someone;
Dipping the grapes I put them in his hand.
To the weaver at the loom, I gave thread
Which he chose not to wind into a ball;
To get the fabric orders out, he sped—
Those who want can now come and get it all.
I snatched one of the wings of a sparrow
And loaded it on to forty ox-carts.
Even forty spans failed to pull it, though;
So the sparrow wing got stuck in these parts.
A fly caught an eagle, lifted it high—
And smack onto the ground, a thumping thrust.
What I tell you is the truth, not a lie:
With my own eyes I saw the rising dust.
10
I have these eyes of mine to see your face;
I only have hands to seek your embrace.
Today I shall set my soul on the road
So that tomorrow I can reach your place.
Let me set my soul on the road today,
Grant me tomorrow whatever its worth.
Do not offer your Paradise to me,
I have no wish to fly to Paradise.
Who needs it, what use is Heaven to me?
My heart's eye would not even glance at it.
All this sorrowful clamoring of mine
Is not for a garden up in the skies.
You keep trying to use it to entice
The faithful, but what you call Paradise
Cannot boast of more than a few hours
And I don't hanker after their caress.
Offer it to those who go by the creed;
You're the one I crave, you're the one I need.
My leaving you would be a shameful deed
For the sake of a mansion and trellis.
11
Let's not just remain adoring,
Come, let's go to the Friend, my soul.
Let's not die longing, imploring.
Come, let's go to the Friend, my soul.
Let's leave this city and this land;
Let's weep, shedding tears for the Friend,
With the cup of love's wine in hand;
Come, let's go to the Friend, my soul.
From this world we'd better be gone;
Why be duped, it couldn't live on.
Let's not be split while we are one;
Come, let's go to the Friend, my soul.
As I take the road, be my guide;
Let's set out for the Loved One's Side.
Let's not look behind or ahead;
Come, let's go to the Friend, my soul.
Before the news of death arrives,
Before my marked soul vainly strives,
Before Gabriel routs our lives,
Come, let's go to the Friend, my soul.
Let's go to the truly sacred;
Let's ask for the news about God,
And taking Yunus on the road;
Come, let's go to the Friend, my soul.
12
God's truth is lost on the men of orthodoxy,
Mystics refuse to turn life into forgery.
God's truth is an ocean and the dogma a ship,
Most people don't leave the ship to plunge in that sea.
At the threshold of truth, the dogma held them back:
At that door, all came in sight, but they could not see.
Those who comment on the four books are heretics:
They read the text, but miss the deep reality.
13
We have dashed into Truth in its mansion,
Viewing all beings in adoration,
The visions and spectacles of both worlds—
We have found these in all of Creation.
These skies which revolve in endless races
And all these subterranean places
And the seventy thousand disgraces—
We have found these in all of Creation.
The seven layers of earth and the skies,
All the hills and mountains and the seas,
The Hell of damnation and Paradise—
We have found these in all of Creation.
The darkest nights and the glittering days,
The seven stars of heaven with bright rays,
The tablet where the Word forever stays—
We have found these in all of Creation.
Mount Sinai where Moses ascended high,
The sacred mansion built up in the sky,
The trumpet which sounded Israfel's cry—
We have found these in all of Creation.
The Old Testament, the New Testament,
The Koran and the Psalms, all their intent,
And the truth imbedded in their content—
We have found these in all of Creation.
Translated by Talât Sait Halman
[From An Anthology of Turkish Literature, Edited by
Kemal Silay]
