Time and this Dream World – taken from Shabistari’s the Secret Rose Garden

Time

The past has flown away,
the coming month and year do not exist
Ours only is the present’s tiny points.

Time is but a fancied dot ever moving on
which you have called a flowing river-stream.

I am alone in a wide desert,
listening to echos of strange noises.

The Dream of Life

You have heard much of this world
yet what you seen of this world?
What is its form and substance?

Whatis Simurgh, and what is Mount Qaf?
What is Hades and what is Heaven and Hell?
What is the unseen world,
a day of which equals a year of this?

Come and hear the meaning:

You are asleep and your vision is a dream;
all you are seeing is a mirage.
When you awake up on the morn of the last day
you will know all this to be fancy and illusion;
When you have ceased to see double,
Heaven and Earth will become transformed;
when the real sun unveils his face to ou,
the moon, the stars,and Venus will disappear;
if a ray shines on the hard rock
like wool of many colors, it drops to pieces.

The Phenomenal World

The world is an imaginary figure,
a diffused shadow of the infinite;
one breath created the worlds of command
and all living things.

As they appear to come forth,so they appear to go
though there is no real coming and going.
For what is going but coming?

…All are one,both visible and the invisible.
God most high, the Eternal One,
creates and destroys both worlds.

…The varied forms you see are but phantoms of
      your fancy
and by revolving quickly in a circle
appears as one.