Ode To The Great Sufi Poetess Rabia Al Basri Poem by Sylvia Frances Chan

There was a divine light enveloping her
as she prayed
shocked that he kept such a pious soul as a slave,
he set her free

Rabia went into the desert to pray
and became an ascetic
unlike many sufi saints
she did not learn from a teacher or master
but turned to God himself

one day I read a precious devotional
by the great poetess Rabia Al Basri
from the second part of the eighth century

The one who tastes, knows,
the one who explains, lies.

How can you describe the true form of something
In whose presence you are blotted out?

Magnificent is she constantly
in all her prayer- poems
a very precious classic poem of faith

about The Truth and nothing but The Truth
by Rabia Al Basri, the great sufi poetess
strong and powerful in her belief to her only God

© Sylvia Frances Chan