At the same time...

At the same time, the Imam’s poetry comprise his only unspoken secrets for which there was no audience in this world, for only words could withstand the weight of such unfathomable mysteries. Words are divine blessing for mankind, and God’s relations with men are through words. Words were a “well” for him to put his head, as in the case of Hadrat ‘Ali ( ‘a ), and whisper his hidden secrets to it. This is how Imam Khomeini’s verses found form and how he occasionally composed some poetry.

Since the poetry of Imam are gnostic in expression and meaning and his mystic personality was infinite, his lyric poems and odes have multiple strata, and each reader enjoys this ocean of insight and meaning according to his capacity of understanding.

The spiteful, ignorant and uncultured enemy who naturally has very scant knowledge and understanding of these concepts and takes them to mean as he thinks, regards the term, love , in these poems to mean as what the vulgar think of it, and the term, Friend , is taken to mean what the vulgar consider it to mean.

While the divine prophets were persecuted by ignorant persons and deceitful enemies or even murdered by them and the Seal of the prophets ( s ) were called by such elements as “crazy,” “magician,” “poet,” etc., it is not surprising if the ignoble, spiteful individuals interpret the lofty words of Imam Khomeini in any way they want. Verily, those who understand themselves are ever so few!

On the other hand, those who enjoy the delicacy of “the jug of love” and divine knowledge, search for perfection, and understand the term, hijab (veil, barrier), tear it and soar above the subterfuge of the meanings of words and immerse in the tumultuous depths of these poems, find them engulfed with the impassioned love of a servant (of God) who has rested his head at the threshold of the “Beloved” or “Friend” and wants nothing but Him.

Such is the worship of the noble and free minds: I will rest my head on her feet, kissing them ‘till the instant of death. I will be drunk with the wine of her jug ‘till the morning of the resurrection. Thus, words, which are the most potent and abstract form of realization of the meanings and of setting forth the facts—that is why poetry is said to be the most abstract form of art—can themselves be hijab or barriers for the comprehension of the concepts.

The deeper and more exact the meaning and the heavier the moral burden of the speaker of words, the more the barriers to them.