The Days I Tied My Heart to Her Hair

How sweet were the days when I tied my heart to the beloved's curling hair, like a Brahmin binding the sacred thread, I tied myself to an idol's locks. My mind became the sun that lit up the whole gathering of the world, the moment I set the image of her face in the mirror of my heart. From the tip of every lash a sea of blood would rise and surge, when, like tears, I gathered drops at my eyelashes from these blood-weeping eyes. My heart trembles like a slaughtered bird and cries like a nightingale; I do not know why I ever tied it, rose-cheeked one, to the coil of your hair. If I had not one day fallen into the cage without wing or feather, I would, like the nightingale, have built my nest among the thorns on the rose branch. When that garden-adorning bunch of roses was gone, with a hundred regrets I wove thorns from my lashes across the gaps in the rose bed. My tongue would scatter pearls in describing the beauty of that cheek, if only I could hold back this radiant, jewel-spilling speech.