Fragments

Thanks be to God that by the command of the world's king of kings, one whose seal of approval is needed before fate itself can act, one for whom, when people warm their breath in prayer, even the lips of those who pray break out in cold sores from the heat. The sea-hearted king, of heavenly grandeur, Shah Safi, at whose threshold even the dust thirsts for the water of eternal life. The king's chief minister, a sayyid of noble lineage and pure descent, who, like God's grace, has a place in every heart. A Mirza whose sweet breath, the fragrance of his good character, if it were sold as perfume at the head of the dawn-breeze market, then in the meadow, by the grace the breeze releases, every flower bud would turn into the musk pouch of a Khotan gazelle. The affairs of the masters of art are now close to order, and the worth of people of honor has found its currency again. The star of learning has risen from its fall to the height of glory, and the knowledge of religious law has climbed from the dust up to the Pleiades. On the night my heart longed for the chronogram of this event, I heard, from the private chamber of nearness to the divine, the spirit of the Prophet saying in Arabic: 'And indeed the millstone of the faith has turned upon its axis.'

How wonderful India is, the Kaaba of all desires, especially for friends who seek peace and well-being. Anyone who has the means of learning and skill, for him the journey to India is a sacred duty.

Cry out against the hand of this disastrous flood, for by it the flower of catastrophe was watered to the full. A flood came pouring down from the mountain of grief, and from it the eye of upheaval lost all sleep. What a flood! A flowing sky that, in its rush, seized lives as hostage. It loaded heavy mountains onto its shoulders and quenched the thirst of mirage-like waves. Slow to leave the head like a hangover, quick to knock you off your feet like wine. The wide arena of the spinning sphere, with its broad embrace, whirled above it like a palace built of bubbles. Its chaos gripped the reins, and death set its foot in the stirrup. By it this rough world was made smooth, and the heavens, once unreckoned, came to be reckoned with. The city of Qom, which was the honor of the world, was left with lips parched dry, like a wave of mirage. In its fluid restlessness it slammed a plank like a gate down upon the water. From all the breaking, it brought the houses down, piling the dust of their walls upon their belongings. The school took a full immersion bath; the mosque and its prayer niche bowed down in prostration to the water. Everywhere the talk of walls had gone shaky, and the speech of doors was broken at every threshold. For the ship of life, amid the waves of calamity, there was no safe harbor except the whirlpool. The city of Qom, which was the envy of the world, the flood turned into a mere drawing upon water. The tears of lovers were tumultuous, risen up as if from a furnace of quicksilver. With what wrath of fire did the hand of fate wring rosewater from the flower of this land? What can I say of what the flood did to Qom? Qom was linen, and the flood was like moonlight bleaching it away. If you press your finger to the edge of any roof, it will tell you the whole story of the flood. I was searching for the chronogram of this date, as a circle of friends sought it too, for the good of it. A friend let out a fiery sigh and said: 'This water gave the dust of Qom to the wind.'

You jewel, in all these eight or nine layers of existence, the eye of wisdom has never seen a pearl as lustrous as you. From the wine cellar of pure intellects, heaven's cupbearer has poured no finer wine into the cup of your nature. In all its long life, the sky, from the white page of creation, has chosen the lofty verse of your nature as its masterpiece. Your essence is untouched by any accidental flaw; your gem is rarer than the ruby fire of the sun. Proud as beauty itself, tender as love itself, you have outshone both beauty and love in brilliance. Your upright nature heads the line of every perfection; your pleasing image is the title page of every book. Your moist verse, from which the water of pearls drips, gives wine to the thirsty even in the depths of a mirage. I am dazzled by your subtle thought, for the freshness of your imagination drowns all thinking in its water. Until the color of your imagination broke into waves, the bride of speech never found henna for her hands and feet. When you speak of medicine, Hippocrates is so shamed that the pulse of the dead stirs anxiously in the dust. For the sick man who asks you for a remedy, the syrup of your answer alone is enough to heal. If I call you the Messiah, there is no surprise in it, for with a single breath you turn the age's decline into youth. Your many-skilled nature is the sum of all perfection; your exalted name heads the register of titles. You who have climbed the heights of knowledge, in every art you open a hundred thousand doors to the masters. My bleeding heart, which has throbbed with longing, is like a drop fallen from the sea of unrest. Your indifference gave my tongue a complaint so strong that the thread of my soul, from shame, dissolved in its own twisting. Once, if it will not give offense, let me state it, not in the manner of reproach or scolding. But I swear by your fine and delicate nature that fairness will not turn its face from the road of truth. From my heart's pain the scent of injustice can be smelled; the heart's smoke, grilled on fire, cries out its wrong. I am tender-hearted, so I cry out from the pain a wail finer and sadder than the rebec's song. The palm tree I raised with the very sap of my soul, why does it not drip its poison on my lips like pure honey? The branch whose flower's dew is the nightingale's tears, why in the end does it not become a skewer for this roasting heart? The candle that lit its face from the moth's own wing, why does it not leave the moth's house in ruins? It was I who set the witness of meaning at your service; it was my hand that lifted this corner of the veil. It was I who, drunk with a hundred-colored wine, yet now, if you do not know me, what an upheaval that is! I am the cupbearer, yet you cast musk into my cup; I am Mani, yet you paint such pictures on the water. Once the reins rode side by side in my hand; now I go on foot while your foot is in the stirrup. Even if I keep silent about the rights of long service, what became of that boundless, immeasurable love? You said you had cut off all hope of gain from him; what does the vat care if the bottle wants no wine from it? Forbidding someone access to me is a fresh sort of honor, the shame of a face that needs the mirror as a veil. Thank God it shields the honor of a whole world, this skirt of my desire, unstained even by water. Even one who does not become a pupil of your nature knows my pure essence in all its brilliance. I am amazed that even experience is no witness for you; you are a wise man after all, do not turn your face from fairness. Though I make this complaint in your place out of distress, it is advice, yet I hold my answer to it. The storm of love, the glory of beauty, the rush of longing, a single mote caught in the strife of a hundred suns. A love that has cast its shadow over the whole world, how can it stay hidden, like a veiled and concealed sun? I had never heard that a flame could stay still; I had never seen the sun behind a veil. It may be a whim to keep the beloved behind a curtain, but no one has ever seen a flame put on a veil. If someone blames me for the crime of desire, on the day of reckoning this account will not be cleared. Why should I hide it? My gaze is purer than my heart. Why should I be troubled? My heart is purer than water. If some stain of thorn and straw touches the flame, then the skirt of love may be suspected of lust. I and God alone know what is in my heart, whatever bond of desire I have formed with anyone. The fruit of my love and affection will appear, if you rub the dust of sleep from the eye of judgment. The one from whom you keep reminding me to stay away, how I wish you had kept him away from others, not me. Joseph must be guarded from the wolf; otherwise, what use is the father's house, its eyes left in ruin?

You, in whose hand the page is bright as a lover's face, you trace lines on water without even a pen. You who reveal the wonders of creation: your nature is more eloquent in speech than a veiled eye is in glances. The tall palm of ambition in the garden of your mind shelters a thousand beneath it, like the sun. You said my little poem was not what it should be, yet there was nothing wrong with this speck's words but humility. But the reproach was more than this servant could bear; my small lament did not deserve so much rebuke. You are far too troubled by my moaning, when in truth the sea is never shaken by the churning of a single drop. I am no fit match for your reproach; one should drink this wine only as far as one can hold. For someone like me to speak of granting you a favor is as absurd as a drop claiming to give bounty to the clouds. My only wish was this: that in youth and fresh spring the eye of good manners not fall asleep through carelessness. If you gained anything from me, the skill is yours; it suits the moon to receive its light from the sun. Grace comes from God, and the source of grace is God too; in the channel the water moves, yet only step by step. There is nothing but nearness and distance, valley and spring; the flood rushes downward from the heights below. If you learned from me and became better than me, the moon on the fourteenth night is no less than the sun. A perfect student is often greater than the master; a torch is lit from a candle sheltered in glass. In short, with this question that holds your thought in chains, you have sewn shut the lips of my speech, like a bud, against any reply.

Chief of the world, soul of all souls, sky of excellence, you for whom the heavens gladly play the servant. The time has come for your fine nature to mother the children of learning, raising them up in the world. It would be no surprise if your miracle-working spirit laid claim to prophethood in the realm of faith. The scroll of the nine heavens hoped, by fate, that your original thought would serve as its ledger. Out of longing to scatter open your book of perfection, the sun pours gold into the goblet of the sky. In the surging sea where the waves of your thought rage, only the mountain of your steadiness serves as anchor. Where is a line as straight as your fine character, to serve as the axis for the heaven of your thought? When the angels recite the sermon of your glory, the ninth heaven becomes a pulpit for your preacher. In its clumsy way, the new moon, seeking honor, takes a poet's whim to weigh out praise of you. If a single ray of your beauty's reflection fell on it, the moon would grow plump and the sun would waste thin. The wheel of heaven has become all eyes now, since the desert sand, by the light of your fine mind, turns into a star. The ornament of your imagination's bride, that beauty, becomes a jewel on the hand and foot of faith's fair witness. Your nature's ascent, on the peak of holiness's sky, rises above the arch of the ninth heaven. A mine is but a pebble and the sea but a drop where your generous spirit spreads its bounty. Speech is tongue-tied and breath falls silent from shame where your nature takes up the art of eloquence. When your pen sets words to march in composition, it makes the partridge's cup bleed its heart's blood. If the veil should slip from the flame of your nature, the fire of clay's craving would turn to ash. The sun in the sky is called a faint speck of light in any land where your fine spirit shines as a star. For the fragrance of your intimate gathering, in honor, the sun turns to ambergris and the sky to a censer. My king, out of the fear that, through your boundless grace, this servant might rise above the moon and Jupiter, with a hundred tricks the sky has flung me far from you; may your kindness sit in judgment over this injustice. With my eyes far from you and my body cut off from you, my lashes turn to spears and my hair to daggers. The torment of separation has nearly made my heart weary of life and stripped of all existence. Despair is the true affliction, or else why fear death? My good fortune is that it guides me to oblivion. Since the demon of parting led my mind off its path, the one whose glance once met an angel's is gone. The mirror of my hope has darkened from separation; where is the polish of union to make it shine again? Before I tasted the joy of union, the wheel cast me into parting, for it cannot bear my standing to rise above its own. My being a Muslim has become a curse upon me; it is hard, even in Europe no one suffers such unbelief. At least, do not allow, in spite of the heavens, that this broken one turn to dust and then to ash. Show some grace, so that perhaps he escapes this whirlpool and lives happily in your service, playing the servant. So long as the bent heavens pass by your door, so long as the sun plays the beauty and the heart-stealer, may the fair witness of your fortune stay forever young and glad, and may your enemy's back be bent like the arching sky.

You who carry the spirit of Aristotle, so rich is your nature: to all the learned a king, and to the king a vizier. That high fortuned minister, when in truth it is a mistake, with you present in the world, to call Mercury a scribe. That precious source of spreading knowledge: in the breadth of his learning, aged Plato is no more than a schoolboy before you. Your rank surpasses all people, and your knowledge surpasses all: a sky in greatness, a sun in your inner mind. That radiant beauty is the dawning place of nobility's light; that wisdom welcoming heart is the east where knowledge rises like the sun. If you light up your court to the measure of your rank, the sun's daily path would fall short of even brushing its edge. If you are a species confined to a single one, it is no wonder: among the people of the world you stand peerless, beyond compare. If the flame of your judgment were absent from the sky for one night, the sun's disk would come from the oven of dawn half baked, like unleavened bread. Hands fall short of the hem, yet your bounty is for all: like a sun that shines on the small and the great alike. You must show regard to both the good and the bad of the world: a remedy your enemies cannot escape, a need your friends cannot do without. How could the world not boast of you? You are a sun to the sun. How could the rose bush not flourish from you? You are a cloud, a rain bearing cloud. Your will cuts the bond between the day after tomorrow and tomorrow; and from dread of your barrier, yesterday slips past the day before. In the height of your resolve you are like the bow in the king's hand; in the reach of your power you are like the arrow from the king's grip. To the sun of kingship you are both the heaven and the light; to the sky of justice you are both the orbit and the one who turns it. For you the bud shows the rose's color clear in glass; for you the petal sifts the scent of the rose out from silk. The heavens have to plan and scheme to grant people's wishes, until they consult your sound counsel. The one who entrusted the world's knots to the high sphere has today placed the loosing and binding of all creation in your hand. If you set your mind to distinguish good from bad, you could lift the shadow from the moon's face like drawing a hair out of dough. Your hatred is bitter on the heart, like water drunk on an empty stomach; yet to a small child your love is as sweet as milk. In your age stands the kingship of Anushirvan with Bozorgmehr as minister: the royal falconry of both king and vizier. Whoever longs to witness the age of Alexander, with a vizier like Aristotle, unmatched and beyond compare. Here is Aristotle, here is Alexander: open your eyes and look. This one rules the realm by knowledge, that one seizes it by fortune. My devotion has grown old in your service, yes; and devotion grown old works wonders in service still. As long as Alexander has a name and Aristotle a mark, may you remain in the vizier's office and the king upon his throne.

Brother, let me explain to you what love and being a lover mean, so you don't imagine this is some joke or idle play. Self-interested people call love an obsession, a disease that only a Hippocrates or a Galen could cure. They told the truth: it is a sickness, but only the kind of love that marries the groom of lust to its bride. If an ignorant man calls that sickness 'love,' well, a king's crown and a rooster's comb share the same name too. Even if its root desire is unclear, there's no fault in that: the sun's disk can look like the pale color of sandarac resin. And if someone counts it among the kinds of love, it isn't far off, just as Rostam, Giv, and Tus all count as champions. Spiritual love is pure, untouched by any stain; the love of lust is nothing but a stock of embraces and kisses. Know that lustful love is something you are built to hide, while spiritual love beats its drums on the roof of heaven. In truth, love is nothing but the longing to be united: the lucky stars draw toward fortune, the ill-omened toward ruin. In the end the lover takes on the very nature of the beloved, for this path is the soul's journey, not amusement and play. It is the union of the mind with what it grasps; anyone who follows Porphyry's way of reasoning knows this is true. The shape of the beloved's character is the lovers' science, just as astronomy was the craft of Ptolemy. In their reasoning toward union they make their own assumptions, assumptions not found in the geometry of Theodosius. A single drop from the stream of love against a hundred seas of reason is one foot soldier of Rostam against three hundred of Ashkabus's cavalry. If you want spiritual love, learn it from the Quran; you won't find its account in lessons and lectures. No, I misspoke: the aim of every love is love itself, or else the work of faith and law would be mere child's play and folly. Do you know why paradise and the palaces of houris were promised? So that a man would love God in hardship and in ease. When would the pious give up their desires for God's sake if they knew the people of paradise are just hens and roosters? If there's no comfort and bounty, what's the difference between a ruin and paradise? If there's no joy and feasting, what's the difference between Herat and Tus? A child only wants his father for the sake of raisins; a wise man understands well the language of a flatterer. Love seeks nothing in all that exists except God: so let your beloved be Indian, Greek, or Russian, it makes no difference. Without love there's no difference from a green prayer-bead, even if someone carves a hundred-bead rosary out of ebony. If love did not yield conclusions in the reasoning of the mind, the logician would have no debate about premises and converses. The ego is cowardly; do not give it room in your aims. Nothing suits a woman's face less than the color of a scowl. Tell apart the pleasure of the soul from the pleasure of the mind: though they are far apart, count one as fine flour, the other as bran. Whoever sees in the beloved anything other than the beloved is like someone who sees in a fish nothing but its scales. Being warmed by fire is not the same as becoming fire; if you can tell the difference, the kiss is yours by your discernment.

The faith's king, Mirza Habibollah, became chief minister of all, and he is worthy of it. For his very name is the date of the event, once you add the word 'chief ministry' on top of it.

Morning breeze, you who know my longing, at dawn pass through the garden where my beloved walks. When you have won your wish and kissed that dust, carry my greeting there in blood at the beloved's door. Then voice the lovers' grief at being apart; and if you lack the nerve, borrow it from their hearts. Tell the beloved: just once, light up your face with kindness, and make the free souls of the world your slaves. My life hangs on my lips, waiting for your step; with half a glimpse, finish off these martyrs of love. They will not settle for freedom from your curls; think of some other plan for those caught in the snare. We know you give no love to your captives; stay cruel to us, then, but at least call it love. Open your lips in the lawful magic of a smile, and make the miracle of Christ's red lips forbidden. Without the lasso of your hair the heart slips from itself; bind this madman in the chain of your snare. Your kindness is an empty place in our walking-ground; it is a lovely spot; complete our joy there. We have burned in the sun of the valley of your absence; O cloud, keep your shade forever over our heads. Take a step or two along the road of faithfulness, so that till the Day of Judgment love and loyalty serve you. We are the withered garden, you the cloud of early spring; turn us into paradise and take your place within. The heart's craving for union with you is a need it cannot give up; tell it to give up its head, but never to give up that wish. And if, like a flame, you rebel and will not yield, tell the moth to burn on, still chasing the same vain dream.

My darling, in whom I take all my pride and joy, may you never be a stranger to my grief, only its friend. You who befriend my enemy and shun your own friend, you who war against kindness and oppose my contentment. You whose only concern in my heart is staying true to you, you whose heart wants nothing but to be cruel to me. You who wipe the sorrow from my eyes yet deepen my longing, you, my quarrelsome, faithless love. My need takes pride in you from head to foot, and head to foot I am trampled beneath your disdain. What looks like my heart's complaint is really gratitude, yet even that is undone by my dull, useless luck. The day I chose you above everyone alive, I said: do not choose another in my place. A whole life has passed away in being faithful to you, and all I ever asked of you was your sorrow. The strange thing is you still won't soften in faithfulness, stranger still, you grow only harder in your cruelty. Back when your alchemy worked no transformation, even my worthless copper had its full worth. Now that the stone on your road sells at the price of jewels, my gold has been leveled flat with the dust. If you do all this knowingly, then I rejoice; but if you have no idea how I am, then woe is me.

You, whose tender glance, with every breath, pours another life into the shape of longing. When you smile like early spring, you spread it freely, and turn the face of desire into a blooming garden. When the blade of your brow flashes in anger, you bring autumn to the rose's bright-colored garden of a face. You drift toward your enemies like the scent of a rose to a thorn, and from your friends you turn away, aloof, like the morning breeze. I won't say it myself: in the ways of friendship, how you sit with strangers, and how you treat me? But let me read you two lines from a peerless poet, in the hope that you might take them to heart. I have one piece of advice for you, enemy of my heart; I wish you'd slip up and lend it an ear. Don't sell your friend in the marketplace of enemies; I fear that in the end you'll lose by this deal.

Mirza Taleb Khan, a vizier with the worth of Asaf and the grandeur of Jamshid, the kind of minister wisdom itself has never seen. Long ago, the heavens, to support the realm, had handed him the seal of the vizier's office. Then it took the seal back for a while, so that people would learn no one had ever been so faithful a guardian of state and faith as he. Now again, in the days of the fortunate king, his just rule rings out like a struck basin announcing fairness everywhere. In his time, from all four corners of the world, the ear of the age has heard not a single groan of complaint. By his good fortune, across all six directions, no royal throne has lacked a worthy king to sit on it. Shah Safi, whose bounty is such that without it not even an unborn child remains in the womb of hope. The king set the seal of the vizier's office on his finger, and so a piece of earth rose to the rank of heaven. When my lofty, star bright nature wished, that night, to draw from Mercury the words to mark this date, Mercury, the moment the king entrusted the writing to him, said: such a king deserves such a vizier.