Beloved, the arrow of Your love

Can actually go through stone,

We who are captured by Your love

Lose both mind and soul.

We shed tears by day and by night

As we get to know Your love,

When we worry about You alone,

All our fears and troubles drop away.

May the hearts that fall

Into Your love just burn and burn,

We deliver ourself to You,

And abandon everything else but You.

Worldly love is merely

A deadly kind of food,

When we see the end with wisdom,

We turn down that poisonous food.

If our mind is truly sound,

We don't do our duty for wages,

We are not enslaved by houris,

We ignore them when they turn their face to us.

The true lover dashes off to give

His mind and his soul to the Beloved,

He offers his life a thousand times

For union with the Friend.

For all those who are wise, this world

Is nothing but a dream or a picture,

And when we surrender ourself to You,

We forget about this dream.

The heart and eyes of Yunus

Are filled with love of Haqq,

With love of our God alone,

He forgets all his friends,

Because he wants to be alone with Haqq.

* * *

(From: Yunus Emre: His Life and Selected Poems written and edited by Faruk Dilaver)