My heart has become capable of every form:
a pasture for gazelles, a monastery for monks.
لقد صار قلبي قابلا كل صورة
فمرعى لغزلان ودير لرهبانLekad sâra kalbî kâbilen külle sûretin
fe-mer'an li-gızlânin ve deyrun li-ruhbânin
Ibn Arabi, Tarjuman al-Ashwaq, poem XI, couplet 13; ed. and trans. Reynold A. Nicholson, London, 1911.
When the heart stops being a wall
it turns into a pasture.
The gazelle comes, and the monk.
No one at the gate asks who you are.
This is taken for an easy openness.
Yet left to itself, the heart
tends to close.
Staying open is a labor.
New every day.
Ibn Arabi describes this pasture
in the wake of a love.
For what keeps the heart open is not an idea,
but the face of someone loved.