Rabiya

Sufi Poet

Poems:

In
my soul
there is a temple, a shrine, a mosque, a church
where I kneel.

Prayer should bring us to an altar where no walls or names exist.

Is there not a religion of love where the sovereignty is illumined nothing,

where ecstasy gets poured into itself
and becomes
lost,

where the wing is fully alive
but has no mind or
body?

In
my soul
there is a temple, a shrine, a mosque
a church that dissolve,
that dissolve in God.

-- Rabi'a al-Adawiyya, from the book, 'Love Poems from God' -- Daniel Ladinsky

Ironic, but one of the most intimate acts
of our body is
death.

So beautiful appeared my death - knowing who then I would kiss,
I died a thousand times before I died.

"Die before you die," says the Prophet Muhammad.

Have wings that feared ever
touched the Sun?

I was born when all I once
feared - I could
love.