Knowledge
November 20, 2008
Over the last few days I've drafted a few different blog posts about things I'm studying now -- Rambam's Mishneh Torah and the ins and outs of the obligation to recite the shema; assorted historians talking about the Deuteronomists -- but have discarded them as insufficiently interesting to post. So you're getting a poem, instead, arising out of my Qur'an class.
We've been reading excerpts from "The Bezels of Wisdom" by Ibn Arabi, a Sufi mystic and philosopher. It's good stuff, though chock-full of mystical allusions. (It helps to read the text along with an interpreter.) The way Ibn Arabi makes use of repeated phrases and ideas put me in mind of one of my favorite poetic forms, the pantoum. So I took the phrases which leapt out at me from his text, and from them wove this poem.
The poem loops back in on itself a lot. If it makes sense, the logic is more associative than discursive -- but read slantwise, for the constellation of ideas and images it contains, I hope there's something interesting and even beautiful there. Those are the characteristics of Ibn Arabi's work I was trying to highlight.
KNOWLEDGE
Know that you are an imagination
(if all of this is understood.)
The Names of God are infinite;
it is more usual with mirrors.
If all of this is understood
this is the original meaning.
It is more usual with mirrors.
If you have understood my allusions
this is the original meaning:
the apostle is merely the transmitter.
If you have understood my allusions
the recipient sees nothing,
the apostle is merely the transmitter.
Whoever wishes to gain access...
The recipient sees nothing,
this divine shadow called the cosmos.
Whoever wishes to gain access:
knowledge in the form of milk
this divine shadow called the cosmos
(if things are as we have decided)
knowledge in the form of milk --
those who ask are of two kinds
if things are as we have decided
the only reality being God.
Those who ask are of two kinds.
The Names of God are infinite.
The only reality being God.
Know that you are an imagination.