English
In Praise of Imam Sadiq
In this world of vanity, the height of wisdom is this:
that a person, like a fairy, vanishes from sight.
The state of the times is something best left unseen.
How lucky is the narcissus, whose eye, by nature, is blind.
My waking fortune has only deepened my envy;
my fate is an eye shut in sleep until the morning of resurrection.
Don't chase fame, for the sky has a slanderous tongue.
Veil your face, for the eye of the star is salty and stinging.
May the tongue of the pen be cut, the pen that made me
famous throughout the world for a single striking line.
How deeply people sleep in this caravanserai,
which is a place to pass through, not a place to stay.
The dust of the caravan has faded from sight into nothingness;
even the moan of its bell has left the listening ear.
The caravan has gone ahead, and there is no road back.
Wishing for what is gone is itself not possible.
Beware, don't lay down your bedroll of idleness in this inn,
for nothing but a flood passes through this ruin.
What trust can you place in a palace where the breaks of disaster
have already opened a thousand kinds of cracks?
How can anyone sleep safely under a fistful of clay,
when the floodwater is annihilation and the soil is the dust of decay?
A thousand houses of mud rub their heads against the sky,
yet no one bothers to rebuild the ruined house of the heart.
The time is past when there was power but no wisdom.
Now that what was possible is gone, what use is wisdom?
Now that you have squandered the ready cash of opportunity,
don't bring the goods of excuses, for you have no excuse.
Now that done and undone leave only regret,
where can we go? The earth is hard and the sky is far.
To the discerning ear, the ring of a china bowl
is a tale of the skull-cup of the emperor of China.
Only that person gains true presence from worldly wealth
who reaches presence by being absent from his own riches.
A thousand years of worship cannot reach the worth
of gladdening a single broken heart with your own self.
If dry asceticism could raise anyone to high rank,
then Balaam son of Beor would sit on the roof of heaven.
And if greed could lift anyone to fortune and high station,
the ant would outdo Solomon in lordship.
If lust and rage could earn nobility,
beasts and birds would lack nothing of being human.
And if outward knowledge brought honor, how could Satan,
crying 'I am made of fire', have grown so proud?
If you had inner sight to see falsehood for what it is,
you would see this earthen image brimming with light.
Yes, what distinguishes a human is discernment, discernment alone;
the one without it is far removed from humanity.
Through the rational soul, man gains nobility over the beast,
or else, by bulk and force, the elephant would be a prophet.
Clothing is a curtain hiding the flaws of the talentless.
What does it matter if the gifted man is left bare?
No art in a person is finer than love.
If you are not alive with love, you are a corpse in a grave.
A thousand perfect cures might come, and rightly so,
to a heart that grows sick from the illness of love.
Come, let us set the pen of thought to the way of love,
for the turmoil of passion has torn the robe of my patience.
From the word of love, my heart fell to the thought of a ghazal,
like Mansur, sent to the gallows for the secret he spoke.