I am the house of felicity, the source of joy. I am the beginning of repose, the gentle smile on a maiden’s lips. A youth sees me and forgets his companions. His life becomes a stage for dreams of pleasure.

I am the inspiration of poets, the guide of artists, the musician’s teacher.

I am the gaze of the infant’s eye. The loving mother sees it and bows in prayer and praise of God.

I appeared to Adam in the body of Eve and made him a slave. I appeared to Solomon in the figure of his beloved, and I made him sage and poet.

I smiled to Helen, and Troy was destroyed. I crowned Cleopatra, and love filled the valley of the Nile.

I, like time, build the day and raze its eve. I am God, bestowing life and death.

I am softer than the sigh of a violet’s blossom, harsher than the storm. I am reality, O men.

I am reality, and I am goodness that you do not know.

SONGS OF HAPPINESS

Man is my lover, and I am his beloved. I desire him, and he is inflamed by me. But, alas, I have a partner in his love who makes me wretched and torments him, a second wife named Matter who follows us wherever we go, a watcher keeping us apart.

I seek my lover in the countryside among the trees and by the lakes, but I do not find him. Matter has beguiled him and led him away to the city, to society and corruption and misery.

I seek him in the halls of knowledge and in the temples of wisdom, but I do not find him. Matter, she who is dressed in dust, has led him to the fortresses of selfishness where heedlessness dwells.

I seek him in the fields of contentment, but I do not find him, for my enemy has chained him in the caverns of gluttony and lust.

I call to him at dawn, when the east is filled with joy, but he does not hear me, for his eyes are heavy with the torpor of greed. I caress him in the evening when the darkness becomes silence and the flowers sleep, but he will not pay me heed, because he thinks only of the concerns of the morrow.