The Long Fast Poem by Sadiqullah Khan

To the saint Ali Usman Hajveri
A disciple asked, if a fast is carried longer
Longer than the day, and to the next?
The saint replieth, ye may,
As, for the cloak of a dervish color camel
Not blue, patches in order or in disorder
All are the same.
And in ecstasy, in rapture a dervish may
His cloak rupture, on his chest.

Either satiate senses, after a fast.
For those
Who stand still, who of the senses unaware
Whose souls but rich
What they may eat or drink.

The ones who are drunk from love
The ones whose lips are on the lips of the cup
From the horizons’ red
What to them is thirst and lust
Who are in the embrace of a bigger love.

For them, the longer the fast or the shorter
For them kept or broken
Carried to the next or on a call’s waiting.
For them,
All are the same.

*Ali Usman Hajveri: alias Daata Ganj Bakhsh, Lahore.11th century. A Sufi saint and author of Sufi treatise Kashf al Mehjub.

Sadiqullah Khan
Islamabad
August 6,2013.