PLIGHT OF POOR POLLY

A rich merchant had his pretty Polly prisoned in a gilded cage.
One day he prepared to pack his trunk and go to mystic India.
Through his generosity he said to his male and female slaves,
What shall I bring home for you, please tell me your heart’s desire!?
Each one craved for some precious object,which he vowed to fetch.

He asked Pretty Polly Parrot what she would like most from India?
She said, when you see the other free parrots tell them of my plight,
Say “ a parrot who is longing to join you is locked up in a cage
By the preordained will of some heavenly supreme command.
She pleas for help and mercy and begs to learn the means of escape,
Is it fair that I should yearn for freedom and soon die in exile ?
Is it just that I suffer in grief while all of you fly in green trees ?
Is this the fruit of faith ? I’m in jail while you’re in the rose garden,
Remember me, then pray and drink a cup of morning dew in the sunshine.

It’s joyous for a friend to be remembered when their beloved
Is the beautiful Layla and I am like her lover Majnun.
You, who dine with your adorable one, while I drink my blood,
Sip one cup of ruby wine for me if you desire fair justice,
Or at least shed one drop on your soft carpet of emerald green.
In memory of this suffering wingless bird who snores in the dust.

Where’s your vowed covenant and the land of milk and honey?
If having abandoned this slave because of some harmful service,
When you harm the harmer, the master is the same as his serf?
Yet the ill you do in wrath is sweeter than harpist’s music.
Your cruelty is better than felicity, your anger sweeter than life.
If this is your fire, then how dazzling must be your light,
If this is your mourning, how glad must be your celebration?

With regard to the ineffable delight of your cruelty
And your idescribable beauty, no one can plumb your depths,
I fear, lest you believe me and make my suffering less,
I am in love with the opposites of violence and gentility,
It is indeed a wonder that I can be enamoured of both,
If I can fly from the thorn of sorrow to the rose of joy,
I shall pine to moan like the plaintive lovesick nightingale,
What a marvellous bird to munch roses and thorns in one gulp!
He is a lover of the Universal, and is himself the Universal,
He is in love with his own Self and seeking his own love!".

Such is the plight of Polly. Where's he who can counsel the
birds?
Where is the weak and innocent dove that is waitimg there within
For the Great King of Kings and all his glorious host to arrive?

A VERSIFICATION FROM THE MATHNAWI OF RUMI
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