English
In Praise of Ali
No scent of any flower reaches me, left or right;
yet your curling hair has chained the morning breeze at its feet.
In the garden, your breeze so steals away the senses
that for an instant no flower's scent dares rise.
With all the splendor your face has added to beauty,
the dew's weeping over the flower's disarray is out of place.
Your stature gives pride a whole new rank;
let the cypress and the boxwood sit down, defeated, and rightly so.
My mind is at ease, free of worry over those who bring salves,
for the tip of your hair perfumes the wound of my heart.
Let the salt of poison on my heart's wound be forbidden to me,
unless its longing yawns open beneath your sword.
The houri's tresses draw to themselves the scent of amber,
if only a speck of dust from your hair lingers in my mind.
All night long, at the threshold of your street, its task is to drip;
though my tears are dyed red, footed in my heart's blood.
For a lifetime now, out of my poverty of heart's blood,
my share of tears comes from the blisters on the soles of my feet.
So often has it fallen at your street that I grow envious
of any dust that might rise up from your path.
If your bold spirit did not bloom from the opening couplet,
another opening of mine shines forth from behind the curtain of the heart.