In the name of God, the All-Merciful, the Most Merciful.
Chapter One Hundred and Sixty-Two: On Knowing the Station of Poverty and Its Secrets
Poverty encompasses all creation,
in entity and ruling, yet is applied
only to a possible being. Its Creator’s names
seek it, racing toward this affair.
The Strong has strength through preparedness,
like the weak: in rulings they agree.
Realities run within their fields,
and each right has free range within itself.
The poor one is he whose destitution prevails
over him in everything; his garment is worn.
You see him in every state
as though a layer, with a layer above it.
Afflictions and attachments do not keep him
on his way from the very entity of his Originator.
Notes
Translator’s note TN4381-1: Al-qawī is read as the Name the Strong in the context of the Creator’s names; ‘the strong one’ is also possible. In the line about free range, ḥaqq is rendered right but can also mean truth or reality. The layer-upon-layer image is retained without supplying an unstated referent.
