Let us recommence the course of our pleasures and
say the tekbir [farewell] to the five prayers. Everywhere,
where the flask is present, you will see, like the neck of
the flask itself, our necks stretching out towards the cup.
Here below, we are only the puppets with which the
Wheel of Heaven is amused. This is a truth and not a
metaphor. We are in fact the playthings upon this human
checkerboard, which finally we leave to enter one
by one the coffin of annihilation.
You ask me what is this phantasmagoria of things here
below. To tell you the whole truth regarding it would
be too long: it is a fantastic image which comes out of
a vast sea, and which re-enters, later, the same vast sea.
To-day we are lost in love, we are in deep distress,
and finally inebriate, within the temple of our idols
render to the cult of wine its due. To-day, entirely separate
from our being, we shall have attained the step of
the eternal throne.
My well-beloved [would that her life might last as long
as my sorrows!] has commenced to be amiable to me
again. She cast in my eyes a sweet and furtive look
and disappeared, saying without doubt to herself: Do
good and cast it on the waters.