123
At the night prayer, when the sun declines to sinking, this
way of the senses is closed and the way to the Unseen is opened.
The angel of sleep then drives forward the spirits, even as the
shepherd who watches over his flock.
To the placeless, towards the spiritual meadows, what cities
and what gardens he there displays to them!
The spirit beholds a thousand marvellous forms and shapes,
when sleep excises from it the image of the world.
You might say that the spirit was always a dweller there, it
remembers not this world, and its weariness does not increase.
Its heart so escapes from teh load and burden for which it
trembled here, that no care for it gnaws at it any more.
— Jalal al-Din Rumi. Mystical Poems of Rumi. Translated by A.J. Arberry. 13th Century.
