I took up my pen and wrote you a letter. Do you not know?
I bewitched a hoopoe and tamed it. Do you not know?
I raised it up to Heaven itself. Do you not know?
Relief came after three days and nights of tears. Do you not know?
I galloped about on an ass, like Jesus. Do you not know?

Do you not know of my days in the desert, weeping like Majnun?
I spurted pearls with my tears, 'til like Varqa I died,
Losing all hopes of sweet communion with Gulshah.
How I burned the ever-intensifying heats of love -
Burned1 yes burned like Shebli, burned a whole mountain.

Do you not know how, hoopoe-like, I flew from Europe to
Chin Machin
And saw Belqis in her garden letting down her hair ? -
Oh, these were the days of song and stars and Solomon!
My voice was like the nightingale's. The birds that fly
- On Wednesday in the forenoon, this - flew down to hear

Do you not know that in the cavern Majnun made his magic
With "Bismillah" first? Entranced, he cried out for his master -
Cried, but God alone heard. Aie, the shrieks of forty lovers
Inspired him with a lust like mountain fire.
Came Thursday, I extinguished it with tears

Do you not know how Shirvan Khan's banquet amazed us all?
He'll be sent down on Judgement Day if he slips by a hair.
One hundred and twenty lines have thousands of arguments in each line.
The thrill of love is deeper than a sleeping river:
My rivers quenched the thirst of forty lovers.

Do you not know my beautiful young hawk, feathers still ungrown?
The world in which I slipped was like a muddy ditch.
A lover burns his heart out: earth does not accept.
Pressing whole rocks and mountains through the sieve
I grew a hundred buds even from hostile thorns.

Makhtumkuli says of the Nine Heavens he is the Evening Star3
Brother to the Seven Stars, sibling of Moon and Sun
Dazzler of my sight and apple of my eye,
Spring of Zemzem, the space between Safa and Marwa.......
Do you not know, like Solomon, I broke the bounds of Time?