The Beloved is Enough

A person who sees Your face once

Will never forget You all his life,

On his prayer beads he recites only Your name,

He can’t remember anything except You.

If an ascetic, always in prayer to You,

Should catch sight of You once,

He will forget his prayer

And prostrate before You alone.

If his eyes happen to fall upon You

With sugar in his mouth,

He forgets the sugar, he no longer needs

To chew and swallow that kind of sweetness.

If they ask me what You are worth,

Because of my love for You,

I’d say the wealth of the two worlds

Would not be enough to describe it.

If these two worlds were nothing but

Vineyards and gardens of roses,

No rose would grow in any garden

With a fragrance better than Yours.

For lovers the Beloved is enough,

He is the scent of roses and sweet basil,

The Beloved stands before

The lover every instant, every moment.

When the sound of Israfil’s trumpet

Makes everything rise from the grave,

My ear will still hear nothing more

Than the pure resonance of Your voice.

If Venus herself were to come down

To earth and sing her sweetest songs,

A lover’s gaze would never turn to look,

Since You are all the lover’s joy.

What can the wealth of this world

Or the next mean without You?

Let no one doubt both worlds

Are sacrificed to You.

If the houris of the eight heavens

Come to me adorned in their beauty,

My heart will never accept

Any other love but Yours.

Whatever exists in this world

Will be there in the hereafter,

When houris and the servants of paradise come,

The lover should not reach out to them.

Ever since Yunus fell in love with You,

Happiness has come to his soul,

At every moment he is reborn,

His life is always young.

Yunus Emre (K.S)

Translated by Mehmet Demirkaya

Please see the life of Yunus  Emre on following link:

http://www.bilkent.edu.tr/~dmehmet/wises/yunus/yunuslife.htm