The Seventeenth Word

Discourse of the stars

 

(NOTE: Once at night in a high spot on Çamdagi near Barla, I was looking at the heavens when the following lines suddenly occurred to me. I imagined I heard the stars’ speaking in the tongue of their disposition. Since I do not know the rules of versification, I wrote them as they occurred to me.)

 

Discourse of the stars

 

Listen to the stars and heed their beautiful sermons.

See what Wisdom has written in these luminous missives of It.

 

They are all delivering this discourse with the tongue of truth:

“Each of us is a radiant proof for the majestic Sovereignty of an All Powerful One of Glory.

 

We are light-diffusing witnesses to the Existence of the Maker,

and also to His Unity and Power.

 

We are His subtle miracles gilding the face of the skies,

for the angels to make excursions on.

 

We are the innumerable discerning eyes of the heavens

directed to Paradise, and overseeing the earth.77

 

We are the exquisite fruits attached to the heavenly branch of the

Tree of Creation; and to the twigs of the Milky Way,

attached by the hand of wisdom of the All-Gracious One of Majesty.

 

For the inhabitants of the heavens, we are travelling mosques, revolving houses and exalted homes,

light-diffusing lamps, mighty ships, and planes.

 

We are miracles of the Power of the All-Powerful One of

Perfection, the All-Wise One of Majesty.

Each of us is a wonder of His creative Art, a rarity of His

Wisdom, a marvel of His creation, a world of light.

 

To the people who are truly human, we present countless proofs in countless tongues;

The eyes of the materialists, may they be blind, never see our faces, nor do their ears hear our speech; we are signs that speak the truth.

 

On us is the same stamp and seal. We obey and glorify our Lord, and mention Him in worship.

We are ecstatic lovers in the widest circle of the Milky Way, the circle reciting our Lord’s Names.

 

Bediuzzaman Said Nursi

 

 

77 It is as if the stars, which can be considered as the eyes of heavenly bodies, were watching the intricate works of creation on the earth and then turning toward Paradise to observe the permanent forms of those works, just as the angels observe the miracles of Divine Power exhibited on the earth, the land sown with the seeds of the flowers of Paradise.