Tahirih never met the Bab. Reading His commentary of the Surih of Joseph--brought to her by another of the Bab’s Letters of the Living--is what confirmed her faith.
She recognized immediately that this commentary on the story of Joseph contained the words she had heard in her dream. She was now certain she had found the Promised One of the age as foretold by her Shaykhi spiritual teachers.
The Story of Joseph according to the Bible
In this poem, she expresses the deep longing for nearness to God. On another level of meaning, the poem below expresses her belief in the oneness of religion. The unusual form of this poem, a rondo in five stanzas, imitates an earlier poem by Hafez in which a Muslim debates a Christian nun about the Church’s Doctrine of the Trinity.
The Muslim hears the Christians chanting the Islamic profession of faith in God and Muhammad. He decides that this belief in the absolute unity of God—not the mysterious division of God into three—is the true path. Christ and Muhammad’s messages are one:
“…You guard the vault where I am its treasure
You keep the mine where I am its silver
I am the seed, and you are the sower
But whose body is this, if you’re its owner?
What’s this soul? You have filled its place
…Since that day my heart cried out, Behold Me!
and I stepped in that street for all to see,
gadding about, a shameless debauchee,
He was all myself, all myself was he—
His jewel set in my heart’s palace
In the dust of my Ka’aba you now dwell
Your face lights the dark world with its dazzle
The waves of your hair my soul’s manacle
The arch of your eyebrows my heart’s idol
Your locks my cross in sacred space
…Then how much longer must I be restrained,
My feigned indifference to you still maintained?
How long must agitation be contained?
A prudish piety, how long ordained?
My wares banned from the marketplace?
I’ll drop my robe, my prayer mat I’ll discard,
drink till I’m drunk, and none of them regard
My passion will fill their house, roof to yard
Mt. Sinai’s flame grows bright, for I’m its bard
By the tavern gate, there’s my place!
…I am the slave on your roof keeping time,
I am the frightened bird snared by your lime,
the nightingale silent in your night-time,
the axis that stands for your name, Sublime
Not I, not we—That agony’s erased!”