Valley Of Unity

The hoopoe now is in full flight
Crossing valleys night and day,
The birds follow with all their might.
'You will have to soar to Unity on the Way.
In this valley all is broken into your sight
Then restored again into the One.
Ten thousand heads from a single source
Are raised, this clamour and crowd you shun,
But that confusing number rises from one force
That makes ten thousand again, thus begun
The whole you perceive becomes a multitude.
The being of whom I speak and you desire
Is beyond the One and many: it is infinitude
And more, beyond before and after, you don't acquire
It by wishing to, this being is greater than all
Is it nothing that does not exist for us to call?'

Finally, from the great flock of thousands who heard
The hoopoe's call, only thirty survive to reach
That sublime place; the other creatures perish and die
With their heartbeats treading emptiness. ~ From the selected
Sufi poetry of Farid Ud-Din Attar, The Conference of the Birds