English
A Poem of Praise
Your cheek is like a rose and your hair like hyacinth; I am dazzled and undone by that hyacinth and that rose.
Your curls are black pitch rising from ivory; your face is milk mixed with wine.
On your ruby lips there is a dot of amber musk; at the edge of your moonlike face there is a cluster of hyacinth.
All year and month you strut with coy grace like a partridge; day and night I cry out in pain like a nightingale.
Your curls are like a crow hung evenly, its beak on the moon and its talons on the sun.
Though a whole world is held captive by your love, trapped in the corner of sorrow and the desert of humiliation,
I do not fear your love, for my heart puts its trust in praising the sun of the world.
That sea of talent, Abul Hasan, that treasury of virtues, whose only trade is kindness and generosity.
No stain touches the margins of his character; no change disturbs the foundation of his fortune.
His nature never shifts for a moment, just as the decree of the Lord of the Throne never alters.
His habit of loyalty never wavers; his promise of giving is never delayed.
Your hand, from the beginning of time, was charged by the God of the world with the sustenance of all people.
Whatever rank people gain from serving your court will never fade, forever.
Each day, as it rises over the mountain, the sun bows to your court as a good omen.
Your enemy is base and you are noble, so much so that no exaltation is found from earth nor any descent from the heavens.
People find good fortune in your presence; the learned seek closeness through your praise.
The moon's face grew blemished because, at every moment, it lays its face on the ground before you in humility.
Any task made hard by the cruelty of fate is eased by nothing but your generosity.
You would say that truly, by one lineage and origin, your adviser is a hoopoe and your enemy a mere ringdove.
Otherwise, at the time of creation, the Lord of the Throne would not have placed that crown on this one's head and this yoke on that one's neck.
You have chosen companions through whom the seat of all the noble is adorned still more.
Men like Buhturi and Asma'i and Jahiz and Sabi, each a master of poetry, letters, learning, and prose.
Hope's hand clings to your generosity; the eye of grace is lined bright by seeing you.
The heavens forever marvel at your perfection; the angels are ever likened to your beauty.
May you flourish upon that blessed, auspicious steed, sweet in stride like Yahmum and sure in its path like Duldul.
Swift as a storm-wind, hard as steel, striking like lightning, with a body like the sky, a demon's heart, and the endurance of a mountain.
In battle it is a demon, in motion a shooting star; in the saddle it is the sky, and the earth is its saddle-cloth.
On the battlefield, from its movement, the edges of the earth quiver like a bead of quicksilver.
If I could find a horse of the kind I described, I would set out at once from this city to come to you.
I would come to your blessed presence, for I have grown weary of the company of the friends at the bridge-head.
Since my coming was not possible this time, I composed this poem on the spot, improvising.
Though it did not turn out fitting or as it ought, I hope my excuse will meet your acceptance.
For in wrestling with this tight rhyme, the door of poetic craft slipped from my hand into lament.
If you graciously hear this praise of mine, if you kindly approve this service of mine,
From now on I will never, as long as I am able, be slow or lazy in your praise and eulogy.
In your service, after these two odes, I will carefully craft a hundred more polished works.
As long as the sun is not like the light that illuminates the Pleiades, as long as camphor is not like the effect of clove,
May your enemy be bound in the trap of death; may whoever is beneath you sink below even the height of Saturn.
May you forever delight in learning and virtue; may you always be joined to culture and pleasure.