Muhammad Shirin Maghribi – Each Way I Turned

Each Way I Turned

by Muhammad Shirin Maghribi

English version by Mahmood Jamal

Each way I turned

I turned to You;
Each place I reached
Was the path to You.

Each place of worship

I entered to pray,
I saw the arch of Your brow
In every arch and every doorway.

I saw the face of worldly beauty

But I saw it in the mirror of Your face.
In the manifest and the hidden,
In the ideal and the real,
All have looked and only to You.

Don’t ask about Maghribi.

He is by madness stuck –
By those dark lashes of Yours!

— from Islamic Mystical Poetry: Sufi Verse from the Early Mystics to Rumi, Translated by Mahmood Jamal
/ Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/alicepopkorn/ /

I really like this one… It is a work of profound devotion, without an ounce of dogma.

Each way I turned

I turned to You;
Each place I reached
Was the path to You.

Each place of worship

I entered to pray,
I saw the arch of Your brow
In every arch and every doorway.

It suggests a spiritual journey of great intensity and yearning, yet, at the same time, at rest
with the constant recognition of the Beloved — everywhere!

I saw the face of worldly beauty

But I saw it in the mirror of Your face.
In the manifest and the hidden,
In the ideal and the real,
All have looked and only to You.

We don’t have to strain our eyes looking, looking, looking. Wherever we are, whichever path
we are on, we just have to see.

Catching constant glimpses of the Eternal in the minute and mundane and manifest, as well
as in the most elevated and most inward… everything in and out and all around becomes a
window to the Divine. Who can then act sober and sane?

Don’t ask about Maghribi.

He is by madness stuck –
By those dark lashes of Yours!

Muhammad Shirin Maghribi

Iran/Per (1349 – 1406) Timeline

Muslim / Sufi
The name Maghribi refers to the Mahgrib region in North Africa, but Muhammad Shirin
Maghribi was actually born in Tabriz, in what is today Iran. He received the name Maghribi
because he traveled in the Mahgrib region.

Maghribi was a student of the great Sufi philosopher ibn Arabi.

More poetry by Muhammad Shirin Maghribi