English
Second Opening: In Praise of the Imam
How glorious you are, your station beyond all imagining; even thought cannot find its way into your sacred sanctuary.
You hold a place so high that the summit of the great throne is, to the vast realm of your worth, only a flat plain.
You are the king whose praise, like that of your grandfather and father, fills a thousand passages of God's own word.
Your majesty and worth rise above all measure; your rule and rank surpass even fate itself.
Time is grateful to serve at your shrine; the heavens are indebted to wait at your door.
By your protection the world is shielded from the malice of the sky; by your justice the age is safe from disaster.
Whenever the mirror of your generous spirit is remembered, the dust of grief lifts from the sorrowing heart.
You could cure the pale sickness of the sun, if you made a remedy of the leaven of your own love.
If anyone who opposes you should climb by force up to the heavens, the Milky Way would drop like a noose around his neck.
Your enemy will die with parched lips in the end, even if, like Pharaoh, he were drowned in the great river.
To a friend's ear, the clash of your sword in battle clears the heart of rust better than the song of the lute.
When you charge the broken foe on the day of war, you are more bountiful than the rain-cloud days of spring.
There is thunder in the war-cry of the field and lightning in the flame of the blade; clouds of smoke from the enemy's heart and a drizzle of blood.
Your follower thirsts only for the enemy's blood; even the Euphrates cannot relieve his need.
Since the age is as waterless as the back of a mirror, it is no wonder its people come out parched with thirst.
One from whose ruby lips the fountain of Kawthar flows: why would he soil those lips with this base world's water?
If for a couple of days the wheel of fate, out of black misfortune, filled your friends' narrow hearts with blood through its hatred of you,
yet look now at the hundred torments it suffers from the wounded sighs of the heartbroken who love you.
What heart is not bound to your loving kindness? Judge this truth by the dust of your own grave.
For one pierced pearl of the fragrant dust at your threshold, the sky would give up all the thousand pearls of its stars.
It is no pearl, and I cannot say what freshness this is, that the water of the hidden pearl thirsts for its lips.
Is Karbala not, by your presence, the envy of paradise? Through your connection the whole inhabited earth becomes heaven.
A king with prayer begs death from God, in the hope of being buried in Karbala.
If the sky should offer the sun as its price, then the sun-colored earth there has still been cheated of its worth.
Ambergris cannot reach the rank of his dust, though it give up its soul; it can only deepen its color and scent by being linked to him.
The rose cannot reach his thorn, though it offer its very spirit; it can only push its head up out of his garden's soil.
No wonder that, linked to you, the earth turns into a musk-pod; like the navel of the Chinese deer it is full of blood, and what blood!
My heart burns like a tulip with the scar of longing, if the heavens be mistaken for your shrine.
Though by its vastness the sky boasts of being your equal, mere swelling can never be counted as true fullness.
What a shrine, whose surroundings no eye has ever seen; what a shrine, around which no imagination has ever circled.
Its dome reaches the Fish-star at the height of the highest heaven, the way a towering mountain rises above the plain.
If the sky tried to display its splendor to match it, out of shame it would shift from color to color like a turkey-fowl.
The toppled wheel of heaven spins a thousand times and still cannot reach his roof, like a walnut tossed against a dome.
Even imagination, throbbing like a child on the edge of a rooftop, finds no rest if it should reach his height.
My king, far from your door both my eyes have become two rivers of blood, one a Euphrates, one a surging Tigris.
The dust of your street upon my frail body is a thousand times finer than satin and the costliest silk.
I keep the hope of reaching you in my body in place of my soul; now it is for you and your grace to decide what should be done, and how.
May God bring me to the dust of your threshold, that I may dissolve in it like a drop in the great river.
The longing for Jamshid's splendor is in my head; may God grant me good fortune and a blessed star.
Rein in the swift horse of your words a moment, Fayyaz, for the heart of acceptance has bled waiting for this prayer.
Out of envy at the lofty height of your noble threshold, may the back of the heavens stay bent forever with grief,
and may your enemy's stature be bowed low, while your friends, from the wine of your kindness, have rosy cheeks.
In my longing eyes, the hope of the dust of your threshold, like my love for you, grows greater in my heart each day.