English
In Praise of Ali
If your grief offers my soul no release toward safety,
who will give me shelter from the endless struggle with sorrow and the cruelty of time?
Your captive cannot escape this life of pain and grief by death,
for you do the killing, and your glance breathes life back into the body of your martyr.
Don't be surprised that the color drains from my face under your hot gaze;
your color-stealing look brings the promise of autumn to the eye.
Even when you rein in your glance, both worlds bleed because of you;
imagine the moment you let your flirting eyes loose at full gallop.
You deceive me with promises, and in my pure foolishness
I keep believing the mirage will give the thirsty man running water.
Your hidden look reached me, then passed up the shame of killing me;
who ever expected death to seize a man and then grant him a reprieve?
You wrong me beyond all limit, and my heart is fragile beyond all limit;
perhaps the cruelty you deal me is what gives me strength to bear you.
You feel no grief for my weakness, and I do not know hereafter
who could endure your warring will the way I have, with his very life.
Your sorrow never passes my way, nor does patience spare me a glance,
for your love takes all of one and gives all of the other from my soul.
Sometimes your gaze falls on me in such a daze, as one offers wine
to a drunkard whose head is already heavy with the cup, pouring a fuller measure.
Your manner steals the hearts even of the doves, my idol; step into the garden,
for your graceful walk recalls the gait of the swaying cypress.
After this, the reproach of living drags me down with grief; sweet is the hour
when your eyebrow gives your glance the word to kill me.
Your defiant glance has set a new fashion in stealing hearts:
it takes people's hearts openly and hands them secretly to your curling lock.
Who will bring word to Khosrow that Farhad the mountain-carver, remembering your beloved,
licks the foot of Bisotun in longing, kisses the blade of his pickaxe, and gives up his life?
My heart has nurtured you by weeping blood from its eyes;
no doubt the palm tree of my hope yields exactly what it has been fed.
From the lasso of your twisting locks so little strength is left in me
that when you appear, the sapling of your stature seems to hang upon your slender waist's hair.
When the arrow of your flirting glance seeks a target from the bow of your coquetry,
everywhere the gesture of your eyebrow points it straight at my wounded soul.
Your gaze never falls on me unless cruelty has whispered to your charm
to make your dart sit poised on the string, like a bow drawn taut.
In the land of fairy-faced lovers, only loss is true gain;
how sweet the hour when your sorrow comes and turns my profit into loss.
Even if union with you brings my heart no satisfaction, I am content,
for against the will of fate the king of earth and time grants all I desire.
Ali, master of sea and land, the friend of God, whose generous open hand
gives the empty, greedy belly safety from the torment of want.
If his kind, gracious glance falls on the dust of his road,
no wonder that road's dust should carry the scent of paradise's breeze.
No wonder if his glance gives a flame the freshness of a rose-bough;
no wonder if his look gives smoke the grace of a gentle breeze.
Heaven would never again boast its roses and hyacinths over his bounty,
if the morning breeze brought flowing water to the garden from his roadway dust.
If a trace of the storm-blast of his wrath reached the eternal garden,
it would strike the rose of his everlasting spring with the blight of autumn's poison.
If his approval sets a thing in motion or his refusal restrains it,
he gives the earth time's stillness and gives time the earth's swift haste.
His gracious look takes the throbbing breath from the bud's heart;
the glance of his awe gives the breath of dawn its trembling.
The refusal of his prohibitions stills the joints of the heavens from moving,
and obedience to his commands sets motion flowing like wine through their veins.
His protecting look lifts the jaundice from the sun's pale face;
the glance of his justice gives jaundice to the red-cheeked tulip.
No wonder if the bird of the heart soars on the wings of longing for you;
even a fallen feather, touched by love of you, might take flight.
Your words in conversation bring the dead heart to living breath;
your gentle breath gives the weary body strength and endurance.
The good counsel of your breath sweeps the dust of doubt from the mind of reason;
your reasoned argument gives even uncertainty the nature of certainty.
If the shadow of your dignity falls on the roadway dust, it is no wonder
that your gravity lends that dust the steadfast weight of a mountain.
Don't be amazed if a single sign from your majesty, when it appears,
uproots mountains from the earth and turns them into shifting sand.
If the perfume from the dust of your street brings the garden its luster,
the morning breeze, fittingly, kisses the lip of the bud and gives up its life.
The wrinkle of a wave would no longer rise stintingly on the sea's brow
if your generosity let it sip from the drops of your hand.
The wound of the mine's digging would no longer cut its liver out of stone-hearted hardship,
if your generosity assigned it a pension from the surplus of your bounty.