English
To Qazi Sa'id Qomi
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?