Читать книгу The Singing Caravan: A Sufi Tale - Robert Gilbert Vansittart Baron Vansittart - Страница 4

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The pilgrims from the north

Beat on the southern gate

All eager to set forth,

In little mood to wait

While watchman Abdelal

Expounded the Koran

To that wise seneschal,

His mate, Ghaffír Sultan.

At length Ghaffír: "Enough!"

Even watchmen's heads may nod.

"Asräil is not rough

If we have faith in God."

His fellow tapped the book:

The Darawish discuss

The point you overlook:

Has Allah faith in us?

Know, then, that Allah, fresh

And splendid as a boy

Who thinks no ill of flesh,

Had one desire: a toy.

And so he took for site

To build his perfect plan

The Earth, where His delight

Was manufactured: Man.

Ah, had we ever seen

The draft, our Maker's spit,

I think we must have been

Drawn to live up to it.

God was so pure and kind

He showed Shaitan the lease

Of earth that He had signed

For us, His masterpiece.

The pilgrims cried: "You flout

Our calm. Beware. It flags.

Unbar and let us out,

Sons of a thousand rags."

And Abdelal said: "Hark!

Methought I heard a din."

Said Ghaffír: "After dark

I let no devils in.

"Proceed." He sucked his pipe:

God in His happiest mood

Laid down our prototype,

And saw that man was good.

Aglow with generous pride:

"Shaitan the son of Jann,

This is my crown," He cried.

"Bow down and worship man."

Said Evil with a smirk—

He was too sly to hiss—

"I cannot praise your work.

I could have bettered this."

God said: "I could have sown

The soil my puppet delves,

Yet rather gave my own

Power to perfect themselves."

Still the fiend stiffened. "I

Bow not." Our prophet saith

That he would not comply

Because he had no faith

In us. He only saw

The worst of Allah's toy,

The springs, some surface flaw,

The strengthening alloy.

Said God: "The faults are mine.

I gave him hope and doubt,

The mind that my design

Shall have to work Me out.

What though he fall! Is love

So faint that I should grieve?

How else, friend, should I prove

To him that I believe?

"And how else should he rise?

Lo, I, that made the night,

Have given his conscience eyes

Therein to find the Right.

I have stretched out his hand,

Oh, not to grasp but feel,

Have taught his aims to land,

But tipped the aims with steel;

"Have given him iron resolve

And one great master-key,

Courage, to bid revolve

The hinge of destiny,

And beams from heaven to build

The road to Otherwise,

With broken gloom to gild

The causeway of his sighs

"Whereby I watch him come

At last to judge of Me,

Beyond the thunder's drum,

The cymbals of the sea.

Aye, Shaitan, plumb the Space

And Time that planets buoy,

And you shall know the place

Appointed for my toy.

"I could not give him rest,

And see him satiate

At once, or make the zest

Of life an opiate.

I might have been his lord,

I had not been his friend

To sheathe his spirit's sword

And start him at the end.

"I would not make him old,

That he might see his port

Fling its nocturne of gold

And cheerfulness athwart

The dusk. I planned the wave,

And wealth of wind and star.

Could one be gay and brave

Who never saw afar

"The cause that he outlives

Only because he fought,

The peaks to which he strives,

The ranges of his thought,

Until the dawn to be

Relieve his watchfires dim,

Not by his faith in Me

But by my faith in him!

"I also have my dreams,

And through my darkest cloud

His climbing phalanx gleams

To my salute, and, proud

Of him even in defeat,

My light upon his brow,

My roughness at his feet,

I triumph. Shaitan, bow!"

But Shaitan like an ass

Jibbed and would not give ear.

Just so it came to pass,

Declares our Book, Ghaffír.

We know that in the heat

Of disputation—well,

Allah shot out his feet,

And Shaitan went to hell.

Thus Abdelal. The gate

Shook to the pilgrims' cry:

"When will you cease to prate,

Beards of calamity!"

The poet: "Allah's bliss

Fall on his watchmen! Thus

Our journey's password is

That God has faith in us."