A Complaint

Kindness is obsolete, loyalty gone; of both, only the name remains, like the phoenix or the alchemist's stone: legendary, never seen. Honesty has turned to betrayal, cleverness to folly; friendship to enmity, and decency to cruelty. All the customs of people have been turned upside down by this cheating world and this faithless sky. Every wise man sits tested in some corner; every learned man is struck by some disaster. And there is the one who now brags along the way: 'Where among all people is there a discerning man like me?' He can't tell the madman from the sane; he picks the stranger over the friend. Every group boasts arrogantly against the others, unaware that true greatness is never found that way. Whoever has read the opening verse of the chapter 'Has there not come' will never turn his reins toward arrogance. Yet even though arrogance is a blameworthy habit, for the noble, humility only brings trouble. If I did not force myself into humility, I would not suffer scorn from every wretch and pain from everyone. Though outwardly I look equal to fools, in the end there is surely a difference between us. The worth of kings shows through their strength, just as the emerald, though it looks like grass, is far more precious. From all people, two things have been my lot: hostility from enemies and hypocrisy from friends. One cannot trust the enemies, and one cannot lean on the friends. A crowd has taken up the path of quarreling with me, people without sense, without competence, without merit, without cleverness. I am like that crowd only in bodily form; a sword resembles a leek only in color. Their fight with me is stranger still than an ant setting out to battle a dragon. I feel not a speck of fear of them: no glass can do harm to a millstone. Their hearts split open with hatred of me, like the moon split apart at the Prophet's pointing finger. When I take up the pen to write true meanings, all the claims of that lot dissolve into nothing. The sorcerers' reputation is bound to shatter wherever Moses holds his staff in hand. They will win no rank among people so long as their nature is empty of all knowledge. For a cloud has no value without rain, just as a blade has no worth without a fine edge. Beside my excellence, their deficiency stands exposed, like the disbelievers' helplessness before the prophets' miracles. Against my intellect, even Mars has no power; against my brilliance, even the sun has no radiance. I am the one who has carried the banner of knowledge through the world, from the earth's core up to the corner of the Pleiades. Kings take pride in my learning; my peers follow the model of my verse. With my luminous mind and my clear judgment, I am like lightning in the dark and the sun at midday. My ambition is lofty at all times, like the sky; my lineage is pure toward every kind, like the open air. My words are proof of my high ambition; my words are witness to my noble lineage. No one has ever seen or heard from me an unworthy deed or an improper word. I have not scattered pearls at the feet of fools, nor accepted gifts from the hands of the base. This pride is enough for me: no one has ever found blame in my prose or slander in my verse. And whoever befriends me, I seek his love in return and praise him with all my soul. And if a slip of his becomes plain to see, I count it as right and refuse to call it a fault. The people of Herat will not know my worth until the day I must depart from this place. People do not grasp the sun's true value until its light leaves the sky. Then they know its worth for certain, when night comes and the faint star Suha appears in the heavens. A free, noble man has no standing at home, just as a ruby holds no worth while still in the rock. Even so, I have no complaint on this account: what better welcome could I have found at the start? As long as my speech flows with eloquence, my currency stands accepted among the great. But when I suffer a hundred thousand wrongs from someone, I have no choice but to reveal a little of the story. My grievance is this: a certain group claims closer friendship with me than anyone in the world, and yet they will not draw a single breath to please me. When was this ever the rule of friendship? They deliberately draw my pain onto themselves, the way straw draws amber toward itself. Everywhere they envy my excellence; from every side they take pleasure in my faults. Toward those who wish me well they plot nothing but discord; toward those who envy me they show nothing but warmth. And if in my whole life a need should ever befall me, they abandon my company without any reason. A real man is one who does not turn his face from friendship, even if the mountains were leveled or the sky split apart.