Two Poems: Rabi’a al-Basri

My Greatest Need Is You

Your hope in my heart is the rarest treasure
Your Name on my tongue is the sweetest word
My choicest hours
Are the hours I spend with You --
O Allah, I can't live in this world
Without remembering You--
How can I endure the next world
Without seeing Your face?
I am a stranger in Your country
And lonely among Your worshippers:
This is the substance of my complaint.
~Rabi'a al-Basri


       

The Sky Gave Me its Heart

The sky gave me its heart
because it knew mine was not large enough to care
for the earth the way it did.

Why is it we think of God so much?
Why is there so much talk about love?

When an animal is wounded
no one has to tell it, "You need to heal";
so naturally it will nurse itself the best it can.

My eye kept telling me, "Something is missing from
all I see."
So I went in such of the cure.

The cure for it was His Beauty.
The remedy, for me, was to love.
~Rabi'a al-Basri

Copyright ©:  Translated by Daniel Ladinsky

source: poems encyclopedia

Rabi’a al-Basri was an Arab Muslim Saint and Sufi Mystic.( 714-801 CE)