We are busy with the luxury of things.Their number and multiple faces bringTo us confusion we call knowledge. Say:God created the world, pinned night to day,Made mountains to weigh it down, seasTo wash its face, living creatures with pleas(The ancestors of prayers) seeking a placeIn this mystery that floats in endless space.God set the earth on the back of a bull,The bull on a fish dancing on a spoolOf silver light so fine it is like air;That in turn rests on nothing thereBut nothing that nothing can share.All things are but masks at God's beck and call,They are symbols that instruct us that God is all.

-- from The Conference of the Birds: The Selected Sufi Poetry of Farid ud-Din Attar, Translated by Raficq Abdulla