Between the Moon and New York City

For the Cyranos who leap in the void, for those in-between places and lives, who are not all here, but also not all there! For the silent voices, the blank spaces that we carry around with us; for those who are a shadow of themselves, but remain, like an 'unconquered flame', serene; for the others, who mourn like a whispering blue flame. No words of solace, no music to soothe your soul. Comrades of the non-representative community, companeros, fellow-ghosts, all I have is questions...

Bullah! Can I know who I am. I neither join the faithful in their devout
affirmation in the mosque nor I find myself scaling the subtleties of denial. I do not raise my finger with the righteous nor do i bare my breast with the condemned. I am neither Moses nor the Pharaoh either. The sacred scriptures from this world or from that contain no clues for me. I do not discover myself in the sensual surrender. I am neither concealed by the profane ecstasy of intoxication nor made mainfest by the holy Vedas. I am not contained in what is uncovered by the wary eye of wakefulness or in what is revealed by sleep. No form of pleasure or pain, revelry or remorse, finds me out.

I am not disposed by fire, air, water and dust. I am neither A Hindu nor a Turk, my identity lies neither int he wilderness of Arabia nor within the walls of Lahore. I am not the secret essence strenuously revealed by creed and religion. I was not born of Adam and Eve. I did not adopt my name nor can I own any. I am neither stationary nor adrift. can I know who I am?

It is I myself I know to be the beginning and the end. Neither do I recognise any other being. It is nowhere else but within myself that perception and knowledge are embodied.Then who is he that stands as the Other? And who am I? Can I know b?

----Bulleh Shah