Elegy for Mohammad-Ali, a Student of Fayyaz

How long must I keep this sigh trapped inside my chest? I will go and blacken the face of the sun and the moon. How long will the heavens march their army against me in hatred? My cry, gather your own army of tears and sighs. How long will fate block my path of escape? Then I too will block its way with the force of my weeping. The waves of my mourning never break apart from one another: a hundred mountains have been chained to the feet of a single blade of grass. The time has come, with a fresh grief like an eyelash, to seat my gaze in mourning clothes. My days were already black, and now this fresh sorrow has made night and black day even blacker for me. Who can cure the seizures of the age now that disaster has carried off wisdom, our only refuge? Alas, that lion of the sea-hearted thicket is gone; that prince of the era, Mohammad-Ali, is gone. His radiant face wrestled with the sun for brilliance; his words, though bitter, fell on the rose's face like rosewater. Time wanted a Zaynab for the garden of paradise, so it chose him from the rose-bed of this world. He left the perishable house for the eternal one; he went from this fountain of mirage toward the pure spring. This narrow world was not worthy of his lodging, so he hurried in haste toward another world. Since that humane young man left the world, youth has lost its freshness and humanity its glow. Had he stayed even two more years on the throne of life, you would have seen a man rise to outshine the sun. In knowledge and perfection he was so unmatched that he answered a question still unspoken on the tongue. He was one who could overturn the age and stir the whole city; he was no student of mine, he was the master of the era. What a pity that this rare one packed up and left this house; look how this bent old sky has broken our back. A hundred regrets for that brilliance, that understanding, that wit; alas for that delicate nature and that generous hand. Had fortune let him stay a while in this world, you would have seen what heights a man could reach. He had stayed clear-headed in this gathering of the senseless; he had walked steadily on this road of heights and depths. Light of the eyes of moon and sun, without you there is neither a life-giving sun nor a night-worshipping moon. Without you no joy is left for this ruined world; tell the sun to turn black with grief. You went, but your good name remains as a keepsake; your fresh words remain, glistening like our tear-filled eyes. You went from among us, and our hard, stubborn heart remained like a gravestone upon the earth of your tomb. You were the brightness of the world's mirror, and I its dust; brightness left the glass and only the dust remained. In the garden, without your presence, not one bud opened; this tight knot stayed in the narrow heart of spring. Time was racing rein to rein beside you; in the end you galloped ahead and time fell behind. You were the touchstone of good character in this world; you went, and the coin of goodness was left without its measure. You were the rose at the side of friends and lovers; you went, and tears of blood, like a rose, stayed in our embrace. Without you, we friends will ruin ourselves, until we blacken our own days with mourning. The day you died, where was I, alas, that I could have shrouded you in the veils of my eyes? You existed, and the world had no face for me; that I should live on while you are gone, woe to me. Except for me, who became a living corpse in your absence, no one has seen his own death while still alive. Since you scattered to the dust like a rose in time's garden, I, like a bud with a thousand tongues, have sewn my mouth shut. Since you left the company of the learned, the heavens have blackened the house of speech with the ink of grief. Parted from your face, the rose became a thorn on the tree; at your loss, the cypress sank low in the meadow. The nightingale, parted from the rose of your face, laments; in grief for your cypress stature, the dove sings its mournful song. In separation from your moonlike face, cypress of the garden, you have left neither your enemies nor your friends untouched.