Simple Facts Poem by gershon hepner

Although we know that light attracts
the moth, the moth believes the light
is drawn to it, for simple facts
aren’t always seen as black or white.
Although we know the cup of wine
attracts the sage no less than fools,
the sage will not make it his shrine,
because that violates the rules
he learned not in a tavern or
a monastery but from his mentors
who taught him that his black-white core
is formed from everything that enters.


William Dalrymple, writing about Kashmir (“Kashmir: The Scarred and the Beautiful, ” NYR, May 1,2008) cites a poem by Jahangir’s grandson Dara Shukoh, who syncretized Sufi Islam with Hinduism and might have created a most tolerant society in Kashmir if he had not been defeated by the proto-Wahhabi Aurungzeb:

Thou art in the Ka’b in Mecca
as well as in the [Hindu] temple of Somnath.
Thou are in the monastery
as well as in the tavern.
Thou are at the same time the light and the moth,
the wine and the cup,
the sage and fool.


4/23/08