Now Sleeping, Now Awake
Now Sleeping, Now Awake - meaning Summary
Paradoxical Spiritual Longing
This poem expresses a Sufi speaker’s intense, oscillating inner state of longing and transformation. Images of heat, a silencing wine, and a fermenting sea convey simultaneous silence and overflowing speech. The addressee—implied as a divine or beloved presence—both silences and awakens the speaker, producing paradoxical qualities (wrath as kindness, ignorance as gnosis). Overall it describes spiritual alchemy: inner turmoil that becomes sacred, eloquent stillness.
Read Complete AnalysesNow sleeping, now awake, my hart is in constant fervour. It is a covered saucepan, placed on fire. O you! who have offered us from a cup a silencing wine; Each moment a new tale is shouting to be told in silence. In his wrath there are a hundred kindnesess, in his meanness a hundred generosities; In his ignorance immeasurable gnosis, silently speaking like the mind. The words of those whom you have silenced, cannot hear but those whom you have made unconscious; I am both silent and fermenting for you like the sea of Aden!
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