English
On Mystical Love
Come, my heart, let us turn our backs on the world,
let us pry a stone from the earth and hurl it at the head of time.
No one's mind was ever brightened by the sun's bright page;
let us fling this blank slate up against the sky.
Let us beg a cup from the drunken eyes of the cupbearer,
and like glass laugh at wine red as the redbud blossom.
From this burden of existence that weighs us down,
let us lighten ourselves and reach for the heavy goblet.
Since the turning sky makes us old in the end,
it is a shame to spurn the luck of youth.
Let us dip our heads a moment into the sea of thought,
and then defy the riches of ocean and mine.
Let us bring out fresh pearls of speech,
and though they are worthless, give them away for free.
First let us steal the heart of both worlds with charm,
then, like the beloved's eye, strike at the ranks of souls.
By the blessing of the nail's stroke, the force of these thoughts,
let us leave many a scratch-mark on the coin of the spirit.
If a bold quarrel with bad luck comes our way,
let us throw ourselves into the heart of India's army.
From the sleeve of our sky-roaming resolve,
let us reach out a hand and seek our own true self.
My soul is bred on the sorrows of the world,
my heart is darkened by the dust of this age's spite.
Where is a fresh face that fulfills the heart's desire,
while this idle sun keeps repeating itself behind the clouds?
Perhaps some heart-stealer's kindness will turn toward me,
one for whom the sun is a lover less worthy than a speck of dust.
A flirt whose ruby lips plainly reveal
the salt hidden inside the sugar-box.
A drunken one whose Turkish glance, in the field of war,
holds a hundred riots tangled in its musky curls.
When the glance draws the sword of coyness from its sheath,
wherever you look there is the splendor of heads severed.
What thought of blood-money in killing those who love it?
The dust of its threshold is equal to the blood of martyrs.
In the showplace of its glance, with the arrow of coyness,
every desire the heart seeks is granted.
With the memory of the Zamzam of your longing-stirring lips,
the water stays in the mouth of Kawthar's pool till the Last Day.
In the parade-ground of beauty's display, the sun bears
on its cheek the gold coin minted by the scratch of its nail.
It is a child and cannot keep a mind steady;
it steals hearts, but does not know how to keep them.
A moon whose face the sun has never seen,
a bud whose scent even the wind has never caught.
Do not speak of one like it, my heart, for these words
even the mirror dares not utter to its face.
A face so fair you would say a beautician
washes it each dawn in the fountain of the sun.
The sun cannot boast it is its equal,
for it is just a glass filled from that one's pitcher.
The rose tore itself apart with fresh envy again,
perhaps it heard the nightingales speak of its beauty.
If no one like it is found again in the world,
this idle sun will keep searching for it.
Who could reach union with it even in a dream,
when a hundred heart's blood is owed for each longing of it?
Brahmin, do not boast so of your idol's faith,
perhaps it has tied its sacred thread before that one's hair.
Wounded bird, do not trouble your wings and feathers,
you cannot circle it, for fear of its temper.
What is wine, when its lips breathe such intoxication?
What is the sun, when it lifts the veil from its face?
O king, the realm of my heart is conquered by your moon-like face,
the sun finds shade beneath your black tresses.
You broke the ranks of hearts, and stranger still,
your beauty wins victory from the tilt of your cap.
The sun will love it till the Day of Resurrection:
every speck of dust raised from the showplace of you.
Whenever the sun rides out to show itself,
it makes itself faint so it may fall in your path.
Do not hold back your cruelty, for tomorrow at the Reckoning
the sin will hang upon the neck of your slain lover, as your guilt.
You are a child, and the sun has gained no advantage over you;
what will it do when you grow full, when your moon comes round to fourteen?
No one's blood will seize your hem in punishment
if this warm glance pleads your excuse.
The sword-girt sun rises from one corner;
how can your beauty muster its army for you?
You have no equal in the worlds above or below;
is there one like you in paradise? I think not.
If the sun has a face, it is shameless and without grace;
but dew on the rose-cheek of idols is the sweat of modesty.
O bud, do not throw the honor of modesty to the wind;
the color of the rose's beauty comes from the water of modesty's face.
In the garden of your face, O fresh spring of beauty,
the one thing without color or freshness is the flower of faithfulness.
I have neither heart nor faith left because of you, and even so,
your coyness is fitting, your flirting fitting, your defiance fitting.
I bear your cruelty as long as I live, but
where is release from this pain and grief even in death?
You were a nursing infant and I was your friend;
how did you turn bloodthirsty? Why all this estrangement?
I drink blood at your hand, O nursing child;
when your milk turns to blood, what is left as my share?
There is an arrow from you in every pore, yet I make no complaint;
say yourself: who else could bear your cruelty more than this?
Each day some of my honor is scattered to the wind because of you;
this is the wage of one who longed for you through the nights.
I will not pull my foot back from the quest, yet it is no use:
the broken heart's affair cannot be set straight by your crooked locks.
This blood-dripping wound my heart has just received,
it is clear as bright water that your sword has made it.
Every evening when your beauty shows itself,
the sun sinks into the earth in shame before you.
All my life I have not taken my eyes off you;
whether it was you in my sight, or your image.
At the Resurrection, the glory of sinners comes from this:
every lover's blood that you have trampled.
You drink wine with a rival, O moon, what are you doing?
The blood you have drunk, I will not make lawful for you.
You are still a child, so hold back a measure of your coyness;
wait until your crescent rises to a full moon.
Yesterday you were a moon, today a sun;
your months and years pass, each finer than the last.
Your sapling brings forth a rain of divine light, and beside the fire of Moses
it makes your young tree rival the tree of Sinai.
Beauty will not let go of you, for it has read
the omen of good fortune in your blessed face.
In the age of your loveliness, the sun and the moon
swear by your glory and majesty.
My love, your quarreling has no end;
cruelty and torment are sweet, but only up to a point.
Look at my black day and my dark nights:
this is my day and my fortune without you.
Like the flame inside a lantern, my hidden burning
shines out from my chest, from my restless heart.
I am like a threshold fallen at this door, for
the dust of your door is the honor of my standing.
Sit a moment before me in your coyness, so that
fate may set the reward of my patience at my side.
Open those sweet lips with a smile, what harm is there
if a bud should bloom from my springtime?
O you, more beautiful this year than last, why is it
that my year, from love of you, is worse than the last?
When my low luck and contrary star
drive me by force from the dust of your threshold,
I am glad of this: that on the walls and doors of your street
the blood of my eyes will remain as my keepsake.
Your coquettish glance never tired of cruelty;
the sword of your coyness drank from the stream of my wounds.
When did Joseph ever have this freshness, this moon-like face,
this way of smiling, this manner of looking?
This coyness, this flirting, this eye, this glance,
in your age, how can anyone keep their heart safe?
In love I dug mountains with my eyelashes, and yet,
before you it had no more worth than a straw.
My eye went blind without you; blessed be the memory
of when this eye had its healing collyrium from that road's dust.
There have been lovers, but where is one like me
who had such dark days and such black fortune?
A hundred times you burned me and still you are not satisfied;
my poor heart had such great sins by your creed.
No one has ever seen your face without the veil of your hair;
my sun always took refuge in shade.
If your eye shed the lovers' blood with its glance,
from each warm look of yours it had a hundred excuses.
The wound's blood-dripping lips never close from delight,
since your dagger gave the wound a tongue inside its mouth.
O you, for whom even the sun longs for the healing dust of your door,
in your alley the morning breeze sells kohl.
Every speck from your threshold is another sun;
a hundred suns are dust beneath the feet of your street.
Unbelief, from the breaking of your curls, broke Islam,
the way the prayer-beads folded double in grief beside the sacred thread.
From the magic turmoil of your tresses,
a hundred riots, bound by the hands, were caught in every ring.
Out of longing to see your face, each morning
the sky brings the gold of the sun as a face-revealing gift.
The heart is in the dark prison of your hair;
each of its rings is a window of calamity.
The long, far road of your tresses melted me away;
a hundred lifetimes passed and still it had no end.
Do not stir the flame against twigs and straw any more;
I fear that, like wild rue on the fire, you will burn a world from me.
My hand cannot reach your hem, but my blood,
even at the Reckoning, I wonder if it will let your hem go.
When your eye shames me with a glance,
it makes my blood lawful to your sword as if it were water.
How can I hide that my heart is in love with you?
All this writhing of mine comes from the hair of your slender waist.
I have one heart in my chest, and so many thousand wishes;
all of these depend on your hidden kindness.
No one has done coyness as beautifully as those eyebrows;
this is an arrow worthy of the strength of your bow.
Thirsty-lipped as I am, how can I not die, when the pure ruby
is quenched by longing for your pearl-scattering lips?
The arrow of fate that strikes someone without warning
is but a sign of the sudden arrow of your glance.
We are certain you will not fulfill even one in a hundred,
that promise of yours that hangs in our doubting heart.
Your fierce-tempered coyness, if it is your garden's keeper,
will not leave a single nightingale in your garden, from cruelty.
The opening of my narrow, grieving heart
depends on one unknitting of your eyebrows.
I will stop my complaining, for the beloved's heart is delicate;
the temper of coquetry is delicate, and very delicate indeed.