Odes

Blessed be God for this stirring of the morning breeze; how far the grace of its craft reaches, from where to where! The new grass has become all tongue in thanks to spring, which lifted it from the dust for a fresh dwelling. Nature's caravans sent gifts to the eye and heart, delivered by the hands of growth and blossoming. The breeze put the running water in chains; the back of the earth dressed the face of the tulip in silk. With half a sip it drew from the cup of the air, the soil poured out all its secrets over the plain. With so much blossom, wild rose, and greenery, you would think the earth had grown pure enough to mirror the sky. The violet is like night, and the tulip its lamp; jasmine is the dawn, and the rose the wrapped sun. Like an honored elder walking ahead, the blossom arrived, with a crowd of young shoots trailing behind. The song of Barbad rose beneath the nightingale's harp when the bird tuned its throat to a phoenix's melody. Through nobility of soul that lord earned his name; even empty-handed he stood tall. Blossom and branch are words spoken by star and tree; breeze and herb are hints toward body and soul. The coming of Ramadan in the midst of spring scattered the customs of revelry and undid the work of pleasure. The silken-stringed instrument writhes upon itself, for in the fast no one has means or music. From so much cruelty the blood froze in the wine cup's heart, for in the season of roses no one paid it any heed. Now you see the singer and the harpist lined up in rows, like idle masters in the corners of mosques. Instead of the silken string, a rosary in hand; instead of the plectrum, a prayer of glorification in the palm. The lute fell silent because, from an empty belly, its pulse no longer stirs, its limbs gone weak. The harp sits on its knees, head bowed low, like a scrupulous worshipper in the sitting posture of prayer. If the miracle of Ramadan has not broken the ordinary order, then tell me, against nature's spite, why is this so? The rain's water has become the oil of the tulip's lamp, just as the morning breeze is the flame of the blossom's candle. The plane tree and cypress have raised their hands, row on row, striving hard to proclaim God's greatness. The cloud rains down so hard upon their heads that I have imagined it a prayer for rain. Since the rose keeps company with the thorn to the end, if it should be a revealer of secrets, it does not surprise me. The narcissus sank into its own affairs from wonder, once fate woke it from the sleep of neglect. Blue-robed and yellow-faced, the water lily deliberately took a ritual bath for prayer. The blossom lays its shining white hair upon the dust, for it is desire that so disgraced it in old age. The lily thrust out its tongue from thirst; no wonder, since it is both fasting and in the heat. In the manner of those who chant at dawn, the nightingale raised its voice from the branch tips at midnight. The breeze opens the closed folds of the bud again, like the nightingale rising to call for the pre-dawn meal. Look at the black-heartedness of the tulip at such a time, that it will not let go of its cup of wine for a moment. Perhaps the violet turned its tongue to slander, for like a lie it draws its tongue out endlessly. If from newness the rose acted with wanton pride, at the hand of a short life it got a fitting beating. And if out of naivety the bud only bit at water, see how in the end its reward is fire. The cloud weeps with a burning heart, and rightly so, for in springtime the cloud has very little life left. Though the rose sometimes wears a laughing face, the tears it sheds are all show and hypocrisy. If a single drop trickled from the narcissus's eye, one teardrop is enough from the eye of the blind. Like those who fast, the bud has closed its mouth, and from its mouth breathes the scent of Khotan's musk. It has two blessed moments: one when it blooms, one when it kisses the carpet of our master. The order of the Muslim community, the support of the gifted, whose threshold is the prayer-direction of the wise heart. Lofty as his own judgment, fortunate as his own name Mas'ud, gentle as his own nature, young as his own luck. The crescent of his fortune becomes full moon at its first sight; the perfection of his knowledge reaches its end at its very start. The cloud's reservoir would be wounded by the sword of lightning if it tried to rival his hand in generosity. Only what is right passes over his tongue, for his words are pearls, and the pearl never errs. Blessed is your agreement, the gate of eternal life; and your opposition, the tooth of the key of destruction. By your effort the difficult problems are humbled; at your court the market of the learned thrives. The mind of ambition sees only your likeness in dreams; the eye of the heavens seeks your equal in the water and finds none. The sign of joy at your presence is written on morning's brow; evening takes its color and face from your enmity. The sky, whose habit is stubborn as a bow's arch, bent itself double before you out of straightforward honesty. The pregnant age would give birth to no bright wit from the night except by the aid of your mind as midwife. If the fire of your resolve did not thin it, the pores of the air would be more tightly closed by the mass of the earth. You are the one whose noble lineage on both sides makes Adam and Eve take pride. The bud of your kindness blooms from wide acceptance; the freshness of the flower of your manners comes from the water of modesty. Withholding has never been your habit except in the fast; the only thing you grasp is a lesson, and all else you give away. In debate, if you speak against a mountain, the echo that repeats your words is silenced by your argument. They say as a proverb that night keeps secrets hidden; then why are your secrets revealed from the night of your handwriting? Learning would have collapsed under the blows of deprivation, had it not taken a staff from your pen. You are the backbone of the holy law, and your own back is strong, for the hand of destiny supports you when it decrees. If the age comes to know your justice, from now on it will never plunder the goods of our life. And when the bride of your mind lifts her veil, modesty flees its bed at midnight. By your bounty the empty side of desire is filled; by your giving the treasury of the sea is emptied. One of the marvels of your pen's tip is this: from murky water it strings a necklace of gleaming pearls. Because poor gold has taken on the color of your envier, you spare it no mercy in any way. The opening of the sword of your opposition is the passage for souls; the twenty hands of your loyalty are the belt of Gemini. If the trace of your gentleness fell upon the taut bow, its tension would turn to relaxation. Cure the enemy's brain with the sharp sword, for water and greenery are good against melancholy. For fear of your watching, the moonlight this month dared not lay rouge on the lovely flower. Your justice sat Venus upon the bull when it saw that not a breath of the lute's music was let free from the ass. How blessed: from shame at your kingship, the ill-wisher's heart is broken and crumpled like the folds of a robe. I have a heart full of all kinds of tales, none of which is hidden from the mind of my master. I see no other way but silence, for I have not the courage to say one thing into two. Yet with all this I will throw out a subtle point, in jest, not by way of complaint, God forbid. If your love had not made me your patient servant, why would I have endured such a burden of cruelty all my life? The servant's dues are met simply by this: all his poems, apart from this ode composed in your praise, all his other odes, whatever you find of them, carry the heading: 'And by him, also in his praise.' My robe of nurture must have a thousand layers now that the pistachio of my nature has split into double-kernel praise. Your general bounty needs no asking, for it is no condition to beg light from the sun. How fine an ode, whose meaning shines from firm words like the light of your manifestation on Mount Sinai. If I recite it into the ear of the deaf boulder, from delight the granite mountain would tear open its shirt. I would close my tongue like a pistachio from speech if any one of these poets could bring a second like it. Live a thousand years in the shelter of the world's chief master, the lord of the law, the king of the learned. May the wish of each of you be fulfilled by the sight of the other, just as the world's hopes are met by the grace of you both. Ramadan has come, and for the ill-wisher, from its workings, two things are ready, thanks to the glory of your rank: a body melting like a candle, yellow and withered, and a heart like a lamp, catching fire and laid open.

I am the one whose heart and hem, all at once, have been freed from the grip of suffering. I am the one for whom the turning of fate has finally kept the promise my soul longed for. I am the one who, in the darkness of tyranny and oppression, had his prayers answered, like Jonah in the whale. Here I am again before the lord of the world, my tongue loosened in thanks and praise. I see all this with my own eyes, and still I cannot quite believe it of myself. This is the valley of Mecca that once guided me; I see it plainly, and here I stand. How fine: your collar is the dawn's break of justice, your sleeve the sheath of generosity. Morning's face is adorned by your kindness; evening's locks are tangled by your wrath. When your judgment sets a plan in full order, it becomes the sun at the very meridian. Your mind speaks nothing but the truth; your thought sketches no shape of error. A handful of water sets a haystack ablaze wherever your wrath holds command. Where your grace shows its tenderness, the millstone itself nurtures the grain instead of crushing it. In the market of your power, what is the whole sky worth? A single worn, cheap piece of silk. In your nobility you are like a lily: sweet in speech and beautiful of face. The oyster gnaws its own pearl with its teeth, ashamed before the beauty of your lips. Your mind conquers hard problems the way an army of light overwhelms the ranks of darkness. If in your giving I call you sea and mine, know that I have insulted you by falling short. In the days of your justice, even the bow, out of pure straightness, turned away from its own curve. Your noble spirit has laid out the table of bounty and called across the horizons to the feast. If the deaf mountain heard your prayer, the tongue of its echo would answer nothing but Amen. Whoever has lined his eyes with the dust of your door will find plain kohl no longer worthy of them. Reason grasps the hidden secret from it when the tip of your pen says: 'If you could see.' In its insolence, whenever the sky now and then kisses the hoof of your steed, a crooked notion, shaped like the new moon, keeps forever turning in its heart: that in its arrogance it might destroy itself by imitating the horseshoe of your mount. How splendid the praise of your patience, weightier than the sands; how splendid the account of your might, mighty in strength. I have a long story to tell, free of lies and clear of any slander, about the things that happened in the master's absence, in this city, and especially to our companions, whether from the king or from those beneath him, whether from the officials or from the leaders. If your noble ear will not grow weary, I will tell it all in detail, from the beginning. First they reached out to plunder, and in the looting the poor became rich. They roamed through the houses like invaders; no favor was shown even to the saints. The secret storerooms lost their honesty, and their trust was handed over to the unworthy. One man boasted of ten bundles of squirrel fur, while another owned nothing but a bunch of leeks. They drew out the gold, then from that stolen gold made themselves hats and robes. As a lover's secret spills out through his tears, the buried hoards were laid bare from their hiding places. Then the earth was shaken with a mighty quake, and the earth cast out its burdens. When they were done looting the goods, they carried off the very houses themselves. Everything became fit to be dragged and hauled away: mansions, shops, houses, and buildings. How many an old, ancient household that once stood firm on solid pillars, was suddenly hurled by one raid from the height of the heavens down beneath the dust. It was so scattered apart that no two bricks were left to touch each other again. The walls were full of gaps like a broken row of teeth, and yet no toothpick was left lodged in them. Everything grew ruined, as a base man ruins good natures: flaw upon flaw, wreck upon wreck. When the earth was pounded flat, the dust scattered, and on the halls was written 'We shall fold up the sky.' The rooftops kissed the ground at the doors, and the columns, in their anguish, sprang from their places. The foundations, weary of sitting still at home, all at once set off toward exile together. The unbaked bricks rode off on donkeys, tumbled out of the mold of their solitude. The baked bricks, cramped in their hiding, chose to wander out into the open square. They bade farewell to their homeland of dung and rubble, and left for the countryside on the backs of donkeys. The dwellings, like their dwellers, were thrown into turmoil; such was the way of things when the time demanded it. With the mad craving to hoard silver and gold, the minds of a whole people were filled with alchemy. Once again came those violent blows, and that endless dividing up of gold. The empty handed man was locked in a pillory like a head in a board; the man with coins was struck on the neck like a stamped coin. One had a rope at his throat like a spindle's thread; another had shackles on his hands and feet like a spinning wheel. One had his veins drawn from his body like the strings of a harp; another had his ankles pierced through like a reed flute. One stripped the jewelry from his wife; another tore the shirt from his own back. One had a club over his head, 'Come, sell it now!'; another was under torture, 'Hurry, hurry!' They wrenched from the eye of the narcissus the pure gold that had grown there by God's own seal. Blood froze in the fingernail of the flower bud, for its body was in agony under torment. The virtuous woman, like a delicate Persian rose, had been dragged out of her curtained chamber. In the crowd, for the sake of a few scraps of gold, her cheeks were clawed and her garment torn. Gnashing her teeth under the blows of the stick, she was forced to hand over her own silver, piece by piece. The free and noble head escaped that mob like a lily, only through lashings of the tongue and forced cries of 'long life to you.' The rich man who had arranged everything, tuned like a lute, with every instrument and means of pleasure that wealth allows, Who once had fame and reputation in the world, and a whole apparatus of song and melody at his command, Who had his treasury and his gatekeeper, his fine goblets and his tall lamps, Sometimes a Chigil boy to massage him, sometimes a Khata beauty as his interpreter, His donkey with a saddle and girth of silk, his head resting in the embrace of lovely idols, First they stretched him out on the rack, then gave him the punishment they thought he deserved. They bound his hands and beat him with the rod: 'Come now! Whatever you have, bring it out, quickly!' He screamed and screamed, and it did no good, except that he paid over his weighed-out coin. Now his house, his hands, and his bowl are empty, his fingers held out like a beggar's. The poor weak man who, like a needle, had a pinched, narrow life, tormented by the length of his own coat's hem, Whose means of livelihood were knot upon knot, and whose doors of income were sealed by hardship, Who had worn his body thin as thread, hard as iron, from endless striving and running about, Just to gather two or three rags together he would race about, headlong, in every direction, They seized him wretchedly, dragging him by the hair, and pierced his ears with the hand of cruelty. They stripped him out of his clothes so bare that not a single thread was left on his body. And from that wailing, a fresh fire seized the homes, a fire that emptied houses more thoroughly than the plague. The mosques became choked cesspits, the pulpits turned to firewood for the soup pot. Where once the faithful came with lowered lashes, sweeping away even the dust from its reed mats, Now, in broad daylight, you see it caked with filth like the corner of a latrine. A dead dog lies rotting in the very spot that once held the foreheads of the saints. The mosques that were once the home of the devout are now lined up as stables for donkeys. The roof has fallen down in prostration like the holy men, and the columns are bent double like the ascetics. The prayer leaders hang like lamps, and the prayer niches are cast down like worshippers in prostration. The minaret struck its cap upon the ground, crying: 'They have leveled me with the dust.' In haste the mothers carried the cradles out of their homes with a hundred sobs. The pure young brides, along with the master of the house, have become companions of the stray dogs of the street. One wails and weeps, crying, 'My home, my kin!' Another mourns aloud, 'What disgrace has fallen on us!' Many a veiled woman who once would not step out of her house on feast day or funeral now, out of helplessness and despair, has taken a stranger for a companion. Homeless, an old woman sleeps in a mosque beside her chaste daughter. And of those tender, delicate ones now wandering, so many, so very many, roam the corners of the earth. Come, look at the walls and the moat and see how upside down this whole affair has become. From the moat my body lies buried alive under earth, while the weight and heads of the dead hang in the air. No mercy for the child, no shame before the old, no regard for people, no pretense of decency. No one to ask what crime this was, no one brave enough to say, 'Why?' This is not zealotry; where is fairness? Are we Muslims, and yet content with such deeds? What kind of zeal is this? Even the pagan Abkhazians would not allow such customs and ways. With such rites and manners, do we still boast that we are the community of the Prophet? What excuse can they offer for acts like these? It is as if they believe there will be no Judgment Day. The disaster that struck us in the year of our exile, let me first say what caused it. Whoever is ungrateful for a blessing is stricken with its loss. For many years Isfahan lived at ease under your good fortune and your glory. No wind scattered the rose, no sword-edge of the sun assaulted the shade. Without the nightingales' sermon in the meadow, no morning breeze became the confidant of the bud. Out of decency, no sword bared its body openly in public. So restrained were people's hands in those days that even amber had no power to attract. In that land no claim was accepted, even in broad daylight, unless two dawns bore witness to it. No dealings of self-interest and favor with the rulers, no bribes handed silently to the judges. Though the pen was sick and weak, it still kept itself away from anything false. Whoever practiced deceit dark as night was, like it, punished with public exposure by the dawn. Though gold is two-faced by nature, it never gave false testimony by concealment. Like a scale, whoever leaned toward gold out of greed was stoned. No one knew the worth of this gift, no one grasped the true depth of this care. Since we were not thankful, inevitably by fate we fell captive to a tyrant. A ruler who ruins and is raw as the nature of wine, who burns the heart and pours out gold like a cheating dice game. All is tearing down, killing, and burning, with no fear of God and no shame before anyone. As if it were a crime worthy of Yazid, this man's gold is freely plundered; over a beggar's coin, another's very breath is squandered. The schools lie in ruins like the fading custom of generosity; nobility has turned dark-faced, black as the hand of fate. The tree of skill is like an antler's branch, barren, without leaf, growth, or fruit. The worthy man's fortune keeps sinking, while the base man's standing keeps rising. Every estate is seized, and every seizure an estate; every village has its lord, and every village is lordless. As on the Day of Judgment, all now flee: father from son, kin from kin. No one has any crime but being alive, no one has any refuge but hiding. All are wounded, with the balm out of reach; all are drowning, and the friend estranged from the friend. No strength to stay silent, no daring to speak; no end to the fear, no scent of hope. Since Mas'ud Sa'id had no power left, what did we say then, Bul-Qasim, Bul-Ala? God made a parable of ingratitude for blessings, in the Quran, in the story of the city of Saba. There was a city, adorned and lovely, pleasant and secure, brimming with wealth and plenty. Two beautiful gardens flanked it, left and right, full of every kind of comfort and delight. Its streams flowed from Kawthar and Salsabil; its air healed the sick and kept the healthy well. Its clear water was pure wine, its plants were sugar, its saplings sprung from the Lote Tree of Paradise. Its roses and lilies came from fine character, its fruit from righteousness and giving. It was named 'the good land,' with a forgiving Lord as its guide and example. When they turned away from thanking God, He sent a certain creature upon them. Suddenly, with the teeth of vice and corruption, it gave them over to ruin in the great flood. Their two gardens turned into two other gardens, full of bitter colocynth and thorny weeds. Its trees became all thorns to the eye and heart, its plants all seeds of tyranny and cruelty. No water in the spring, no moisture in the cloud, no blossoms on the branches, and none allowed. No shade below, no fruit above, no scent of faithfulness, no color of purity. If we measure it against the name of Isfahan, Saba itself was but half of our city. Thank God, that age of Sodom-like cruelty has vanished behind the curtain of its ending. They found a key for what was locked, and laid a remedy on the wounds. Your presence became salvation for the captives, your word became healing for the wounded. The glory of your arrival reached the heavens; from wall and door came the cry: Welcome! Welcome! Yes, the moon beats its drum beneath a blanket when the shining sun goes into hiding. When Solomon loses his ring, the demon becomes king over humankind. His people worship the golden calf, while Moses turns for help to God's presence. When the blazing sun goes into hiding, it is no wonder that the faint star shows itself. The enemy's trickery will not last now, since your pen has become the solver of every knot. The magician's illusions turned to empty wind the moment Moses cast his staff from his hand. Though your absence handed us over to the lion's claws and the dragon's jaws, when we saw your face again, we said: God has done well in what has passed. What I have set in verse is not merely praise of you, but a complaint we bring before the one who hears complaints. Sift these words through the sieve of thought, and you will find grains of alchemy within them. From this sea, the diver of mind and wit brings up many a glowing pearl. This poem is not flawed by forced repetition, for it is verse woven upon many different events. Hold your servant in the way that befits you, since you know that he belongs to you. Through the long years, no hostile wind has ever clouded the pure clear water of his loyalty. For you, honors and robes; for us, praise; fate must keep pouring both abundantly. May you remain, ordering the affairs of the high, for all the length of nights, in spite of your foes. High in renown, close ally of generosity, wide-gated in your court, awe-inspiring in your might. Since you have pitched your foe like a tent upon the ground, spread out the skirt of majesty like a great pavilion. If a low-spirited enemy has thrown down gold, you, gather nothing but a good name. May you keep enjoying children, rank, youth, and wealth until the Day of Judgment.

You are the sun of the kingdom; until the very end of time, may eclipse and decline never lay a hand on you. Wise pole of the faith, the sun and moon kiss the dust at your feet to gain more beauty and grace. Because your nature is the bridal chamber where beauty shows itself, they have set up the whole stage of imagination and fancy. Even Rostam, son of Zal, would rise trembling from the earth like a willow branch if he were shown your awe. Every morning the sun begins its day at your threshold, taking it as an omen of good fortune. The dread of you turns a sharpened spear into pure water pouring down the throats of your enemies. When your sword strikes an ill-wisher, blossoms of the Judas tree bloom on his neck as blood springs up like new grass. If the crescent moon could reach the hoof of your horse, it would boast of it before the sun itself. When the Simorgh of your ambition spreads its wings, it covers all of existence in a single sweep. Gold is always battered and pale-faced, because your generosity holds all wealth in such contempt. Death draws its head into its chest like a turtle wherever your spear lifts its neck to strike. Your mace shattered the color of your foe's face, just as a coin's stamped face is broken and worn. The heavens sought to reach the level of your worth; reason said, better not to chase the impossible. Your ill-wisher tastes nothing but his own blood, if indeed he wants something lawful to consume. Your gem-scattering hand, you would say, was created in eternity itself to give, to be generous, to bestow. From leagues away they come to meet you: sins drawn by your pardon, requests drawn by your bounty. Envy of your kindness made the morning breeze sick; the fragrance of your character perfumed the north wind. How many branches of fortune the heavens uproot before time can raise up a single sapling like you. Since my face found its bond with the dust of your threshold, I have counted this bond as the true calendar of my life. In the boundless field of your praise, though your servant found ample room to pray, he kept it brief and light in this way, so that weariness would never trouble your heart. The hand of speech falls short of the hem of your praise; why should I stretch out idle chatter in vain? In your presence I have offered these small crumbs of words, not to show off, but only out of obedience. Now the favor of your kind regard is needed, both for this writing and for my present state. Until the last day, Lord, keep this perfection devoted to such fortune and splendor. May there be a reflection of your flourishing glory in the freshness that endures through every month and year.

A light fell on me through the window of good fortune, and it turned the house of my heart into a home of joy. The dark ruin of my heart grew so radiant that I forgot the very sun in the sky. And all of this is a single ray from my master's mind; may fortune never let me stand at any door but his. Nur al-Din, king of the gifted, who with the tip of his pen at every moment shows me a fresh and cheerful beauty. He whose one act of nurturing generosity made the proud heavens submit to me, taming their necks. I am ashamed before the point of his pen, for from a sea of grace it sent me pearls beyond counting, unpierced and pure. Ever since my eye grew familiar with the dust of his door, all rubies and jewels lost their worth in my sight. You who, from your boundless care for people of art, are on the verge of giving my heart real joy. I never knew that a breath could revive the soul; your breathing has made a master of me, once your pupil. Since I saw the curls of your script and its subtle meaning, no rose or boxwood ever came to my mind again. My soul fell in love with your words; it is as if your sweet, eloquent lips gave me the heart of Farhad. The beauty of my eye was joined to your writing; that is why my eye began to give birth to pearls. I am the slave of your pen, which without the shame of begging gave me all that ever passed through my mind. I could not give thanks for a single hour of your bounty, even if my life stretched out to seventy years. I have a fate that leaves my lips cracked with thirst, even if the whole Tigris of Baghdad plunges me under. From this fine model that unlocks a world in one word, nothing opened for me but the blood of my own liver. Though a sword's blade may be fit to conquer the world, what use is it to me when I have no strength to wield it? With the army of despair charging me from left and right, woe to me if your kindness does not answer my cry. Without the help of your good fortune I could not cut a single hair, even if I were turned from head to foot into a steel dagger. Do you know what they gave me from this land grant? A mockery that made me die a hundred deaths standing there. The dignity I still had, I traded for this bread, and the broth of grief burned my liver with injustice. My own choice threw me into this worthless place; how splendid, then, my sight, my mind, and my judgment! In this farmland I saw one hateful rule that by itself uproots me from the very foundation. There is a harvest scattered to the wind, and when it was divided, the grain went to those shameless whores, and the wind to me. The child of my mind has put on a paper robe and come to your court, so that you may grant me justice. May servitude to you be my duty forever, if the master frees me from this closing verse.

You proud one, before whom even the brave sun bows, whose steed is the swift storm of the heavens. In fear of you it wields the sword all day; in dread of you it rolls in the dust all night. The heavens make themselves a shield like a teacher's rod, for the sky's arrow, if left undisciplined, would strike. The sea sinks hollow from the blow of your wrath; the sky arches high beneath the weight of your bounty. With one grip your resolve can snap the tip of Mars's lance in the very heart of Scorpio. When your pen writes, it fills the Preserved Tablet with hope; reason, like a pupil's pen, is worn down at school before you. For the decree of your life, fate filled these vials of ink with day and night. From the horseshoes of your steed, sharp as claws, the mangy sky keeps scratching at its own body. The sky finds nearness at your court, yet even then no one is as close to you as I, your servant. The age looks black in my eyes, for I am left small and distant, like a star in the height. Like an arrow strained on the bowstring by cries of praise; like a blade left feverish from the wounds of tongues. Just as you seek out from cultured people the one still new and slender as a crescent moon, so out of kindness call now and then upon the servant whose claims on you are old. For men of experience know that the tried one, in every case, is better than the untried. They set what should come first behind and what was last ahead; that is why my affairs fell out of order. Though the lip came first and the teeth came after, look, Lord, how strange this state has turned out. All the teeth stand in ranks within, while I, worn out, am left outside at the door like the lip. Since I saw that at your presence no praiser is welcome unless he is refined, though I am not refined, I have given myself this one title to bear. I submit to any name and title assigned, so long as it brings me near to you. But this servant is not made for such work, if choosing a creed is also a condition. My only remedy today is patience, until this wavering sky turns another way. Yet the brick that once falls from its mold fits back into it only with great difficulty.

What is this glowing body that rushes through the years and months? A brave horseman, victorious, triumphant in every battle. Each dawn its flame sweeps clean the courtyard of the sky; its face is the fountain from which the world's light springs. Its reign begins to fade past noon; its fortune is overturned by the coming of dusk. Every evening the stomach of the west devours its disk like a meal; each night, with its blade, it turns the twilight of the sky into roast. Sometimes it rests in the well like Joseph; sometimes it returns from the belly of the fish like Jonah. At times it shines like a fiery basin at high noon; at times, with the wound of its blade, it holds a whole world in torment. By day it robs the road openly with its sword; by night, veiled, it tunnels beneath the earth like a thief. Its body is like a shield, yet a sword-wielding shield; its form is a spring, and that spring is ablaze. For one day, this eye and lamp of the age lets a thread of light run from its mouth, like the wax dripping now and then from a candle. It trembles over the world's head out of the love in its heart, yet because of its fierceness it is always addressed as a dagger. Contemplate its form and it is the beloved, the candle, the basin; imagine its body and it is the cupbearer, the goblet, and the wine. Like gold drawn thin as silver, or bread taken from water: fresh of face, sword-wielding, at rest amid all its turmoil. A wondrous disk that becomes the seal upon the faster's mouth; a strange seal that burns a whole world with its heat. It draws a golden line upon the board of the earth so that the reckoning of years and months stays clear at least. On the white page of dawn its shape is like gold on paper; in the black of night its ray is like a sword in its scabbard. You would think it a cake of soap, with a basin and warm water, so the sky may wash the black dye from the tresses of night. There is no relying on it, for it is unsteady: at each month's start it comes leading a new moon at its stirrup. All year and month the mountain sits by the road, spreading its skirt to gather flecks of gold from the sun's abundant bounty. In its coming and going it tramples our lives underfoot; with its passing, our years hurry away. It has a sleepless eye, full of fiery lashes; and the wonder is that its light fills all other eyes with tears. Like the master's fortune, it is the enemy of sleep; so with its blade it drives slumber from people's eyes each morning. If the swords of kings lift gold from the dust, its blade playfully scatters pure gold upon the earth. Who is it that kisses the master's threshold each dawn? It is clear: the sun, the sun, the sun. The threshold of Rukn al-Din Sa'id, leader of East and West, chief of sun-like rank, a master lofty as the heavens. Though the sun is bold enough to stare into the lion's eye, before his awe it turns yellow and trembling and hides its face in a veil. If it tried to compete with his loyal mind, the hot-footed sun would be stuck like a donkey in the mud. Does the sun dare enter by way of the roof, if one day the sentinel of his wrath should challenge it? If the sun of his fortune cast a shadow upon water, its body would never rise up in the shape of a bubble. A sun beyond him: does this even fit in the mind? Would anyone ever permit such an overreach? That one never breathed a breath except off the path of error; and this one never once stepped outside the way of the right. O you whose inkwell's blackness gives birth to a sun like dawn; O you whose sword-hand is like the greed of a slave-owning master. The sun has drunk a sip from the cup of your grace, so it keeps falling against door and wall like a drunkard in ruin. It weaves a rope to bind itself to you; that is why the sun's beam is always spun tight and pure as thread. Sometimes, ashamed before your judgment, it sinks into the earth like a nail; sometimes it twists in awe of you like a taut cord. Had the mountain's blade not been your hand's apprentice for years, when would it ever have grown rich enough to give? If your banner did not hoist the sail of the sun's ship, the sky's Nile would suddenly dry into a mirage. The shadow loses not a mote to the sun if your justice enforces the rule of accountability in the world. If your judgment did not wish it, in an instant the sun's guardianship of day and the moon's watch over night would vanish. By your heart and hand the horizons of the world are made prosperous, for the one shines like the sun and the other pours pearls like a cloud. Until it catches fire from the sun of your mind, how could a shooting star dare raid the assembly of the sky? Suppose the sun did gild the world's horizons with gold; from its gold one cannot make a case on any grounds. Generosity: it is your generosity that from your face and eye down to the enemy's has seized all the pure gold and lustrous pearls. O exalted one, in your praise a poem was composed so fine that the sun, like Mercury, recorded it in its book. My mind's warmth comes from the sun of your glory; otherwise, how would a nature like mine have this fire and vigor? The presence of the sun is sacred law; were it not, I would make my claim: poetry is of this order, so, in God's name, who dares reply? The shadow of your good fortune must endure forever; if the sun refuses to shine from the sky, let it never shine at all. So many people offer good prayers for your life that the sun keeps rolling within their answered prayers.

It's a feast day: pass me the cup of wine. Now is the time to act. What are you waiting for? Seize the moment. My skull is pounded raw by the drumbeat; only the cry of the harp and lute can soothe it. For a long while I have kept my mouth shut like a bud, away from wine and roasted meat. It's time that, like the narcissus, we lift our heads from sleep and drunkenness. Let's pile up sins once more, for piety brings us nothing. Gone is that age when the turning sky kept torturing my heart for no reason. Now if fate quarrels with my heart, I answer it with two cups of wine. From now on it's my hand and the wine cup; after this, my only wish is pure wine. Wherever I see a drink of wine, I pitch my tent on it like a bubble. Tonight all the world's affairs have been turned completely upside down, in every way. The one who yesterday wouldn't even drink water in secret today drinks wine openly. And the one who yesterday sat cloistered in the mosque today lies sprawled drunk in the tavern. The glass that is a wine cup today was, last night, a lamp in the prayer niche. Today the master of the wine feast is the man who yesterday led the congregation in prayer. The cup is in full swing, cupbearer! Come now, seize this season of joy. That rosy jewel of delight, which has caught fire and glows like an arrow's spark, rise and bring it into the field of the arena, so it may circulate; that is only right. Lift the veil from the daughter of the vine; this cover and concealment do not suit her. The wine you missed during the fast, hurry now and make it up. Pour that cup of ruby wine that has the color of a rose and the scent of rosewater. Fling dust in the eye of sorrow like the wind, drawing over it a veil of fire made from water. Reason, despite all this loose living, would bring this fiery water to its lips. Wine like red gold, from which the heart's grief flees like quicksilver, its foam clenched at its brow like coral over molten ruby, so radiant in the cup, like a sun rising out of moonlight, joy-rousing, delicate, and bright as the face of the noble, blessed minister, the just lord of the age, whose words outshine the luster of every fine pearl, the one whose like fortune, ever wakeful, has never seen even in a dream. Beside the height of his honor the sky is bowed low; before the flood of his generosity the Nile is a mere mirage. The one whose awe keeps even the wolf's fangs from tearing the throat of the flock. You whose praise has become the chant on every tongue, whose kindness has become a collar on every neck, your forbearance a treasure in your rival's soul, the swiftness of your resolve like the vigor of youth, the spring of generosity's water draws its hope, its trickle, from the well of your fortune. If a great lord came alive again at your door, he too would be counted one of your companions. Under your hand generosity is like a rein, kissing your feet the heavens are like a stirrup. It is from seeing the radiance of your judgment that the astrolabe turns its back on the sun. Your lofty ambition is a sea whose shallows the sky has never found. If the planet Mercury were not your praiser, the sky would hurl it away from itself. Your envier's face is red because he has dyed it with the blood of his own liver. Saturn's name turns lucky the day you call it your little servant. Whoever opens his mouth against you, like a pistachio, comes out red-faced like a jujube berry. Wherever you hand out silver in giving, the reckoning stands on your fingertips. You are the one who, in the moment of giving, holds the clouds themselves at your fingertips. Your grandeur, praise be to God, needs no listing of titles. Fakhr al-Din, son of Nizam al-Din, is enough; more elaboration than this is unwarranted. How can the sea match itself against your hand? Does it not fear your generosity might rebuke it, suddenly lift its dust away, so that then not a drop of its water remains? When the ship of thought reaches the ocean of your praise, it founders in the depths. Your praise would not be exhausted even if they wrote two hundred volumes over. As long as the world's affairs are set in order, may your affairs be well-ordered in the world. The tent of your fortune and success has its ropes tied to the pegs of eternity. Your judgment is right in every thought; your enemy is struck down in every state. Spend this blessed feast in joy; may you find in the world whatever you desire. Your lips on the rim of the rosy cup, your hand at the waist of a lovely one's curling hair.

My soul is worn out by the torment of my aching eye. Lord, what am I ever going to see with this pain-struck eye? Every night, from my own glow, until dawn, I burn in my tears like a candle, in pain and torment. The eye has become like an unworthy child: to have it is grief of mind, to lose it is agony. So many blades have been drawn against my eye that you would think my eye and the sun's eye are one and the same. They say pure musk turns to blood with time; I saw with my own eye how blood became pure musk. In the land of the eye there was so much reckless pain that no people remained, for it fell idle and to ruin. From the cracks that the swelling made appear, my eye rightly earned the name of almond. From sheer inflammation the sockets of my eye have twisted like an arrowhead, curled shut like a bud. The layers of this ruined eye have been pierced with fissures, like a spider's web frayed through. And the pupil of my eye trembles within it the way a fly quivers caught in a spider's web. The teeth of my tears grip the hem of my eyelids fast, slipping from the hand of pain and running off in haste. Inside the eye, of many different colors, like paradise there flow rivers of wine and milk and water. Look at these days of my eye: how it has suddenly become a nursing infant, with spittle dripping from its mouth. It was a swift running messenger; now its feet are blistered, and its only cure is to dye them with henna. This one reared in shade, this delicate child, has pulled its face back away from sun and moonlight. Like a star my eye is bright only in darkness; I lean toward the dark, like a wrong decision. Like a shadow it has turned its face to the wall day and night, sometimes at war with the sun and moon, sometimes rebuking them. My dark pupil has fled the sun; you would say that in my blind luck the owl turned into a crow. A fiery needle is drawn across my eye when a shooting star flings its beam from the sky's kohl-box. My eye once saw from ten miles away, and now, when it sees a needle, it turns everything upside down. Since sweetness now brings me harm, the almond of my eye keeps away from sugared sleep. My eyeball was once a treasurer of pearls and rubies, and now it cannot even look at line or book. Of all I see, I see only some; it is as if my eye has chosen just a small few of the visible things. The wandering star of tears appeared out of the dusk when the sun of sight sank behind its veil. As soon as the flowing eye saw the blood, in apology it hid its face in the veil out of shame. The rain of tears ruined the house of my eye, because from its sleeplessness the door had swung open. Look: you have seen much meat on skewers; on my eyelid the lashes are like skewers over roasting flesh. My eye is both an ocean and a mine in one place, holding pure rubies and lustrous pearls alike. It is like dew and tulip, like star and twilight, like dagger and jewel, like goblet and bubble. My eye is an open flower and my tears warm rosewater; may no one ever be, as I am, lost in flower and rosewater. In the sky of my eye, from tears and blisters, there are countless planets and fixed stars beyond number. This too is among the wrongs the turning age has done: drunkenness in the beloved's eye, and wine in mine. The ruby and pearl that make her lips laugh, from that my eye has learned only wailing and weeping. The pupil of my eye shed its bead from the inflammation, for it had no strength to stand against the rival, pain. What use is the water-tempered arrowhead of the lashes to one whose very arrows of sight are darkened? The lamp of my sight flickers with the breath of speech when smoky vapor rises in me in torment. I see the blood of my eye poured out with my own eye, every time the humor begins to flow. Before the light a moist film has closed in, the way fog gathers thick in the air. A cloud the color of carnelian has blocked the path of sight, with sudden lightning flashing through that cloud. With my eyes shut I am like an ox at the mill; yet from the water of my tears I am like a donkey stuck in the mud. These two, around the musk-dark pillow of the eye, for nights now have been of no use for sleep. Sometimes I lay a finger on my eye like a reed pipe, sometimes I stretch my hand before me like a lute. Though the dark of the eye is starred with fear of blisters, its face is not fit to turn away from wound and pain. In the membrane's veil it swallows blood like a fetus, a child upon whom the trick of youth already shows. This is the dust of a tent whose hem is full of pegs, its ropes strung tight from the beams of light. It is the bad resting place of the natural spirit, and from it the spirit fled: who ever built a bed in the middle of water? The eye is like a mill, and blisters are the grain in it; this mill turns, driven by the blood of the heart. The pupil of my eye sharply pulled back its reins when it saw humanity everywhere with its foot in the stirrup, ready to leave. Out of pain I even prayed for my own blindness; by God's favor, even that was not granted. The jeweled kohl that gives clarity to sight, I applied so that God might grant me its reward. Where is a generous patron so that I might dedicate this ode to his praise and address it to him? I dedicate it to the pupil of my own eye, for today there is no humanity left except in this presence. Would that it fill my sleeve and hem with pearls, at every moment my sight is kept back from it. These fine points I have set upon my eyeball, perhaps Venus will string them into a necklace for adornment. I would set it on my eye with pride, if any of the poets can give an answering reply to this poem.

How blessed is the sight of you, an omen of good fortune; the manner of noble leadership becomes you well. All your good fortune is faith and the true path; all your deeds are justice and worship. The house of religious law is built up by you; the foundation of virtue is raised high by you. Your nights and days are steeped in good works; your every hour brings knowledge and benefit. You found me in a state that cried 'show me the truth'; I was that lost, that far from any happiness, that my soul was drowning in surrender, caught between the hidden world and this seen one. My spirit and body without connection, my stillness and my movement without will. My senses dismissed from their work, left idle in a corner of dullness. My mind so crowded with tangled fantasies, like a pile of scattered papers on your registry. Stillness spread over my limbs from every side, yet the turmoil of my heart only grew. Life had grown weary of the soul's company; each one wanted to pull away from the other. Now and then my breath went back and forth to the street of living, with a hundred struggles. The sicknesses had overturned the law of health; all the usual order of things had failed. My eye found no rest in any color, my mind drew no relief from any scent. From despair, nothing was placed in my mouth except the words of the final testament of faith. The physician grew helpless with my case, though he brought all kinds of courage to bear. My hopelessness reached such a point that they were reciting Yasin over me for the end. Even the gall bladder trembled with the fear of dropsy as nature and the body waged their war. My whole being stood eyes shut on the edge, death drawing the sword of annihilation. Suddenly a voice of comfort reached me: the master has honored you with a visit. From that single revival I came to know what the return to life on Judgment Day will be like. I saw it as if, in the world of existence, that moment was my hour of nearness and grace. His life-giving breath gave my soul new life; may his years and fortune keep on increasing.

You great man, whose doorstep is a busy marketplace where scholars gather. I have written a little poem, playfully, not in the usual way I customarily do. I have said: You whose smallest subtle thought is a treasury laid up by the wise. Every law that brings a kingdom rescue and healing lies within your hints and gestures. This pen of mine is a weak, ailing patient; the marks of its frailty are still plain on its body. Three men are needed to lift it by hand, and even this comes from the weakness of its limbs. Two or three illnesses are in it, all opposing; I will explain them if your head cares to listen. Its wasting fever is obvious, and its constant drinking of water is clear proof of dropsy. Its black tongue and yellow complexion, though both are signs of a bilious disorder, a chain on the foot yet endless movement suggest its ailment is melancholy. Your judgment prescribed its cure, until its illness fell into decline and faded. In truth, no pen like yours has ever risen from among the viziers of this age. I have come with a word of congratulation for something I missed; let this be its amends. Yesterday, when they said the just minister had asked the doctors for a dose of medicine, my heart would not accept this talk; it said, 'This report is itself a lie and a mistake.' For his noble self knew well that, praise God, he is the subtlest and finest of beings, who, in warding off the harm of the body's waste, rests forever in the shelter of self-sufficiency. The pure gem of his soul is a full moon, from which people draw their capacity to endure. He is not like bodies of feeble composition that, in illness, stand in need of medicine. By the master's life I swore an oath that I would look into this and see why it was so. In this state I sent the scout of my thought running about, left and right, in every direction, so it might learn what the truth of the matter was, or from where this talk had first begun. At last reason said, 'The cause of this I will tell you, clear and plain.' The master has many excuses for generosity, and this was one of the pretexts for his giving. Every medicine's benefit goes to the one who takes it; the benefit of his medicine goes to the good and the worthy. That is, my nature is such an enemy of hoarding that there are only openings and easings within it. So that whoever is his friend, unconditionally, deserves fine clothes, gold, and brocade. There is no more thought or opinion beyond this; helplessness has only prayer to return to. May the courtyard of your ease stay pure of that gloom which lies in the passing of all that endures.

You, whom the soul of all souls blesses a thousand times a day: may God protect you from the evil eye. Hoping only to be honored with a kiss of your hand, the very eye of heaven has waited long for you. The horizons of the kingdom are lit by your bright judgment; greed itself grows fat while your slender pen keeps working. In the royal garden you are that delicate bud, more lovely than any other, hidden or in bloom. Wherever you have passed, for years to come the scent of good fortune rises from the dust of your road. King, whom the turning sky counts it a duty to lay each day some heart's desire in your arms, the wheel of heaven hurries because of your swift resolve; the earth lies still because of your steady wisdom. At once it girds itself like the spear in your stirrup, whenever victory shows itself in your line of battle. The brow of fortune stays green from your ruby-red blade; the enemy's life turns to poison from your snake-like lance. You are the support and shelter of a kingdom, for always good luck sits beside you and reason runs your affairs. This is the dawn of your fortune; only wait, and the tumult of your rising will trouble the mind of heaven itself. Until the world's end, the hand of heaven's scribe will date the kingdom's history from the days of your reign. The wind of victory rose from the fire of your spearhead; the dust of rebellion settled under your keen-edged sword. Your justice, which tramples tyranny, builds up faith and state; your jewel-inlaid blade is the rivet that holds kingdom and nation. Nature stands amazed at your skillful reason, and reason has fallen in love with your obliging nature. Like your sword's own scabbard, death keeps its side empty in dread of your soul-hunting blade. Heaven has been made small beside your high ambition; the sea is put to shame by your boundless giving. I saw the day-spreading sun throw itself among your servants, a hundred blades drawn in your service. The pages of the sky are one leaf from the book of your perfection; the water of life is one hint from the pearls your speech scatters. You favored your servant with every kind of honor; yes, nothing less befits your true-hearted generosity. Thanks for your bounties cannot be contained in verse; so I keep adding them to my prayers before your Maker. Enjoy your youth, and let anyone who does not love you with heart and soul, as your servant does, eat his own blood in grief. Your servant has laid his hand of service on the hem of your praise, waiting to see what your noble judgment finds fitting. Take this praise-singer under the shade of your grace, though a hundred thousand like your servant stand at your door. Your house existed before the world was founded; may your work endure to the hem of the last day. As long as the four elements exist, may these four things never for a breath be absent from your four, your nature from the joy of pleasure, your hand from rose-red wine, your ear from the minstrel's song, your eye from the beauty of your beloved. Wherever you go and come, may good fortune walk with you; wherever you settle, may prosperity be your close companion.

You in whose praise, in the minds of every master of verse and prose, no thought has ever come more sweet than praising you. Lord Shahab al-Din, no ruler triumphant over the armies of the age has ever appeared save through your clear judgment. Nothing contrary to what you held in mind has ever entered the nature of the heavens or the will of the stars. Of the perfumes your character mixed for the world, the rose and the amber have not received even a trace. The jewel has fled from your hand into its iron fortress; no gem has ever entered a dagger's heart in vain. Since the age laid its head on the line of your rule, it has not been tangled by turmoil the way a lock of hair is tangled. In the reign of your justice, has one drop of blood ever been shed unjustly, except the wine poured from flask into cup? Why does the sea beat its foam upon its own head and cry out? Only because it is left helpless without your bounty. The wind fell into the dust of the road out of your gentleness; foolishly, only fire has risen up to overreach. The long-bodied spear struggled hard to rival your single-handed pen, and never came its equal. Since your justice is the physician for the temperament of nations, no corner of them has slipped into decay. The sick reed pen, whose marrow has left its bone, has no false craving left in your era. Whoever has not come to this threshold on his own feet will one day lay his own head here with his own hand. As long as there is a vein in his body, anyone whose head is not empty like a hollow lute will keep speaking your praise. Like flowing water, your pen holds on its tongue every knowledge that has never made it into the heart of any book. Of those hard problems the mind falls short of grasping, which has your pen not conquered? Its belly is empty and it runs night and day; yes, your pen has not grown thin for nothing. You are free and sweet-tongued like the lily, and in your eyes gold and silver are worthless as a common flower. This is the tear in the enemy's eye and that his changed complexion; it is no idle disgrace that has fallen on gem and gold. Your kindness lays a debt of life upon everyone in the world; I did not say this point as flattery. Whoever has not heard this truth confirmed, tell him to go ask the very doors and walls of Isfahan. They all agree that a lord like you has never been born into the realm of existence. You who have come to crown all creation like a jewel, what has not befallen every gem at your hand? For a lifetime I have longed to serve you, yet fortune has never granted me this good luck. My deprivation from serving you is not by choice; whatever is not fated is hard to obtain. Your servant has curled into himself like a scroll, because he has attended no gathering or assembly. He has drawn his skirt in from people like a bud, for like a rose he has not burst forth in a hundred petals. Your kindness was his usher and your generosity his chamberlain; your servant did not arrive here without a helping guide. Of all kinds of misfortune, which is more crushing than what the cruel heavens have not brought down on my head? The tongues of those who envy me speak what has never even entered your servant's heart. By God, what they have laid to my charge has never taken shape in my character. If they speak in your servant's presence, let them listen too; no one has ever come before a judge alone. The truth of my words will surely become clear, for in the end not much has come of this tale. They said the lord uttered your name; in fairness, I could not believe this report. Because for years, in the presence of the great, the name of no man of talent has been raised. Beware, do not count it as negligence from your servant, if until now he has not come to serve you. Either the hand of misfortune has not loosened its grip on me, or the term of my affliction has not yet ended. What use is throwing a double six from the dice, to one whose piece has not escaped this trap? How can he even reach your presence, who has not yet stepped one pace beyond the summit of the sky? Look on me with a kind eye, even if I seem to you among the trivial things not worth notice. Many men of learning come to your court, but perhaps none has come as a poet like me. Yes, my verse is dry now, it has been a while; from the sea of poetry the tip of my pen is barely moist. I have planted the minister's praise hidden in my heart, but it has not yet come fully into bloom. From now on the tree that drinks the water of your favor will bear fruit, for no fruit has ever come from a dry branch. Accept this meager offering from your servant; do not look at how it is unworthy and unfit.

You, for whom the nine folds of the shining heavens are but one pavilion of your royal tent. To serve as apprentices to your attendants, even the constellation Gemini has tightened its belt, eager to obey. The moon-faced beauties behind the veil of the unseen have grown weak-hearted at the touch of your pen. The foot of the sky was blistered by the stars when it tried to keep pace with your resolve. From the day the cloud saw your hand, in generosity it washed its own hands of the sea. In you the healing herb of your enemy grew unwilling into the wound in his flesh. May the resolve you have formed prove auspicious for you, like your fortunate star, and bring you triumph. You are leaving; may well-being travel with you, but first, attend to the affairs of me, your servant.

My heart, since you know that death follows every life, where does this endless craving of yours belong? Why heap up these perishable things with greedy hands? Get hold of something that death cannot touch. Sometimes your eyes are all on the crown, like a narcissus; sometimes your whole self is buttoned into fine robes, like a bud. For good deeds your nature sits still as a stone; but let it spot wheat and it spins like a millstone, grinding away. Greed makes even sugarcane bitter to your taste; miserliness turns even healing dust to plain dirt in your eyes. You have only seen the wall of the garden of being, unaware of the lovely flowers blooming inside. The surface of the world looks green and pleasant to you, because animal lust has thrown a veil over your reason. You are indifferent to the color of the rose and the scent of jasmine, as long as, like a donkey, your gaze is fixed on the grass. You have buried that noble jewel in the dirt; brush the earth off its head and see it is pure alchemy. Have some shame, so I may call you human; for the noblest quality in a human being is modesty. Why spend your life hoarding wealth? No one is wise who adds to his gold and subtracts from his days. You dig gold from the dust to grow rich, while true poverty is your real wealth. Give up the search, if you have provisions for this road; whoever lacks the poverty that is the road's provision travels destitute. Not the poverty of mere appearance, twin to unbelief, but spiritual poverty, the pride of the prophets. Five times a day it faces the Kaaba, that heart whose four sides border a church. The niche of God's light in you has become a furnace of lust; through your baseness Jamshid's cup is reduced to a soup bowl. You flee the beauty of paradise and graze with the swine; your manners are so coarse you cannot see this is cruelty to yourself. Abandoning evil is the first step toward doing good; the first cure a sick man needs is to guard his diet. The denial of the false comes first in the creed itself: first the seeking of refuge, then the praise. First wash your hands, then pray; that is, let go of everything that is not remembrance of us. Befriend knowledge, and rise up out of the water; for the pride of knowing floated up from that water. A barrier stands between the meaning of the Quran and your soul; if you long for union, wear it thin, then tear it away. That veil is hidden from your outward eye; open the eye of reason and you will see it is only vain desire. Wretched is the hungry man who sits a lifetime at the king's table and is still called famished. You have crammed your stomach so full of excess that it holds neither a hoard of good morsels nor room for appetite. The spiritually beautiful turn their faces toward the heart, for in its clarity, like a mirror, the face shines pure. You are down in the pit of your lower nature, while God in his grace has let down a rope without limit or end. So you can grasp it and climb up, yet you spurn that rope with your foot, and that is your mistake. When you speak God's name with your tongue, where is your heart? On reckoning day your words fail to pay their debt to the soul. From this upside-down way that is your habit, if you turn yourself right over, you find the path of the saints. Dead hearts are not revived by that speech whose words are severed from the true soul. A voice that comes from the mouth as an empty bell suits only a donkey for a listener. Whatever reaches your ear your tongue repeats; the uproar in the dome of your mind is only that echo. What runs off the tongue goes no further than the ear; no word that did not rise from the soul ever enters the heart. When does an arrow that strikes home ever fly back? Only the one that missed rebounds, its passage full of trouble. That is why you have taken on the habit of a reed pipe, hollow talk, since in your heart words are just gusts of air. Whoever breathes with sincerity, even for a single breath, has a whole world of light behind him, like the dawn. The prayer niche is decked with gold designs; but your heart alone knows where its true altar lies. Even that is the small blessing of your hypocritical prayer, though your prayer mat deserves to be called a bare reed mat. The pain of evil and the ease of good both reach the heart; know then whose heart and mind you were meant to please. So you are bound to do only good, since this is the first reward of good and evil alike. If your obedience makes you feel safe, that safety is dangerous; if you fear your sin, that fear is the source of hope. Obedience mixed with pride is the root of a curse; sin that breaks you open is the seed of being chosen. Without God's pleasure, a rose petal is a hedgehog's spine; wherever there is his pleasure, even fire is a rose in bloom. While you walk with existence, you are less than nothing; when you journey into self-annihilation, your rank is eternal life. Whoever leans on anything but God is in pure rebellion; that is why the staff is named for it. If you set that staff down in the sacred valley, it will be clear to you: it is no staff, but a serpent. The flaw is in your prayer; otherwise, at his door the hand of answer waits, reaching out with grace. If you do not believe me, the proof of these words is this: I answer the call of the one who calls when he calls. I answer the call of the one who calls when he calls; and yet, for all that, your affairs stay in ruin. Harder still: your accuser and your witness live within you, for each of your limbs testifies to your own deeds. Tomorrow what good are your boasts and lies, where your own hand stands witness against you, speaking truth? Waste no more of this precious life on the wind, for once it is gone there is no making it up, no second chance. Steal back for yourself whatever of your life you can from the night; such theft is lawful in every faith. You made a pact with time; time made none with you. So why this outcry that the days are faithless? If your bread comes late, you would kill people over it; if your prayer is missed, you shrug it off as fate. Be patient three or four days and bear a little hardship, for that pain is not wasted, and it is the cure for the ache. See how the mountain endured the sword of the sun: look what precious rubies and gems its mine now holds. You would be ashamed of your sin if I spelled out how much eternal grace attends to you. So many thousands of creatures are in motion for your rest, and all of it means nothing to you. The sky never rests, the stars never sleep, and you have no idea that all this is for your comfort. Look at the sun, the very eye and lamp of existence: for your needs it toils in torment, night and day. This scattering cloud, its heart drowned in generosity, is the water carrier of your street and gives you bread as well. At sea the north wind is the whip that drives your ship; on land the east breeze is the fan that cools your soul. In your kitchen the fire eats wood to cook your stew, that fire whose arrogance is the very stuff of pride. The earth's soil climbs up into the branches for your sake, to set in your mouth the fruit you crave. The high mountain guards the carpet you tread on; that is why its skirt stays still and its foot never wanders. It is the mountain's own child, which with its heart's blood it nursed beneath its skirt exactly as it wished. From under its shell the pearl is a slave, ring in ear, in your service, though you have no idea what all this is or why. That orphan pearl, the beloved heart of the oyster: even its attachment is to your wife and child. Sacred law protects your wife, your child, your wealth; your own nature keeps setting your household in order. Before you, torch in hand, walks reason, the sovereign over all the kingdoms of the horizons. Spring, the Kaykhosrow who leads armies, carries fodder on its eyes to feed your beasts of burden. To serve you, all the animals have their faces bent low and their backs bowed down. Every kind of blessing is your comfort; every stroke of affliction is your discipline. When he frightens you, it is a lamp on your road; when he lays duty on you, it is the key to the door of grace. When he lays duty on you, it is the key to the door of grace; who else holds a rank like the one you hold? How long will you object to his lordship? Your task is servitude; lordship befits him. What have you to do with the nonsense of Greek philosophy? Is it not enough that the Prophet and his word both guide you? The one who raised his head into the eternal court is he whose pure soul carries the traces of the Chosen One. Without him no one found the way to the presence of Oneness, for he is the special doorkeeper of the court of majesty. The prophets are all bound to the saddle straps of his glory, and even Gabriel takes refuge at his stirrup. The one whose sight is trapped behind a curtain of blindness can still read the inscription on the coin of his miracle. The disc of the moon shattered in the bowl of the sky, since it begged like a pauper for a scrap from his miracle's table. His states cannot be measured by human understanding; his ascension is beyond the ladders of thought. The whole of creation exists as a gift of his being, even if in the form of time others came first. Yes, the center exists for the sake of the circle, even though the circle's circumference begins from the center. By fitting comparison, his face and stature are the full moon of the fourteenth night, riding at the zenith. The sun with drawn sword is a lone soldier at his gate; the wheeling sky is a beggar with its bowl in his street. The world appears through him, and the world is hidden in him, like the line that a single point brings forth into being. For one to whom God apportioned both perfect form and perfect character, what could add or take away from such double praise? Every page of our record is a mark of sin; the sh of his intercession heals every ailment. If you would enter the house of truth, come in by the door, and that door is Ali, in the city of knowledge. Do not leave his chosen companions behind you; how could they turn their backs on the one who leads them? When the name of the household of the Prophet comes to my tongue, if musk does not keep me company, then musk itself is at fault. Lord, the hope of your pardon has made us bold in everything that runs against your good pleasure. We have no strength to bear your reproach, we are helpless; deal with all such deeds of ours through your forgiveness.

You in whom every single hair holds a captive heart: both worlds are only half the price of one strand of your hair. Your mouth is a mere hairline, and when you speak, the mark of your hair-splitting subtlety shows in it. Envious of your face, on each new month the moon's slim body grows as pointed and thin as your hair. You would think the reflection of each strand of that black hair is a vein of melancholy in my bewildered brain. No one has ever reached the union of your tall stature, except the hair that stands as high as your frame. No sharp eye can tell them apart: the hair on the crown of your head and the hairlike thinness of your waist are twins. The hair of your tresses covers you head to foot; oh, how lovely that black poetry looks on your body. Sometimes you tie a band on your hair and call it a belt; sometimes you drape silk on that cypress and call it a robe. My wounded body could not carry off even a hair from your waist; why then does it linger like this at the edge of your waist? Whoever became your captive lives balanced on a hair, like your belt, even one loaded down with gold. Like a hair I am twisted behind you, heart-strained; the love of your face follows me like a shadow at my back. My sleeping fortune sees nothing but your tresses in its dreams, and to see hair in a dream means only pain and disaster. If for every hair of yours I had a heart, like your tresses, I would lay them all at your feet, for that is only just. Like a comb, my heart set its teeth sharp upon your hair, and like a comb it hangs suspended from a single strand. I am far from you, my heart bound to a strand of your hair; oh, the business of your tresses stretches from here to who knows where. Why bind the hearts of lovers by the ton in your hair? To hang all that weight on a single strand is a mistake. If I depart the house of life like your hair, no wonder, for from longing for you my very brain is in an uproar. Though you have wounded me and drawn my blood like a lancet, your command over my head is fitting, like a razor over hair. O beauty of Khotan, the army of your love encircles my heart, ring within ring, dense as the hair of grass. The hair of your tresses came gently into my heart's grip; to coil in your tresses is the work of a friend. A hair in the eye is a blight to sight, yet my eye sees clearly by the very image of your tresses. I see every strand of your hair held in some heart's grip; what happened, is this the den of a plundering marauder? The morning breeze has no way out of your tresses, for at every hair it fastens a fetter on the breeze's feet. The dust of our doorway has become a mirror of wisdom's face, because a hair from your tresses lies in our comb. If a hair can fit between you and me, then, apart from your waist, this pain of your servant's heart is all in vain. As long as my soul hangs in my body by a hair, it is as though it hangs, twisted, from that tress. There is not a hair's difference between my wounded body and your hair, though I am sad and it is careless with joy. I am parted from your fair face, and so I grieve; the fate of a hair not parted from your face is set apart. Hair sprouts in my hand, but your hair never falls into my grip, with the luck I have and the temper you have. There is always room for it in my narrow heart; that is why the back of your long hair is bent double. I will drag your tresses by the hair to the master's door, so it will give up all its ways of cruelty. From the fire of your face your hair curls up, like the body of the Master's foe writhing in the heat of his wrath. Rukn al-Din Mas'ud, the lord in whose reign the curl of idols' hair is the only cause of disorder. He without whose command's force no hair is cut, even a sword of fate, like the preacher's ceremonial blade. You who have risen to the top from a great man like a single hair: the hair of your enemies' heads bears witness to your greatness. The lamb's back is combed by the wolf's claw, so long as the fame of your justice echoes through the world. Beside the breadth of your bosom the sea is as narrow as a pore; beside your wide rank the heavens are as broad as a hair. The hand of misfortune your Roman-lettered pen, dark-featured as an Indian, has cut short like a black man's hair. Like alopecia, the fire of your wrath makes the hair fall from that lion who sits at heaven's height. By dawn the tip of your pen, sharp-pointed as an arrowhead, splits a hair as fine as an arrow's notch. With the fingertip of grace your nature unties the knot from a hair, a nature life-giving as flowing water. Even if your enemy turned all to hair like a pennant, the hand of victory would set him right atop a spear. From the dust your cavalry raised to the sky, heaven adorned its face like a head covered with hair. Though the sky gained one skin of that rank, it lost not a hair's breadth of your lordship. It is fitting that anyone who grows and flourishes by your generosity and care should leap out of his skin like a hair. Whom did you spurn out of abandonment like a mallet, without every hair of his body rising in revolt against him? Your ill-wisher fell under your spell like one bewitched, for on his body every hair became a dragon. Whoever, like a mustache, steps out of line with you must have his neck shaved off like hair from the head. And whoever has a single hair out of place with you finds every hair on his body a nail of torment. The heart mixed with your love like wine and milk comes out of calamities whole, like hair drawn clean from dough. Your enemy's life hangs by a hair, because in your days the evildoer is short-lived. My lord, the state of me, wounded and bewildered like a hair, is tangled and dark from every kind of disarray. It is all the effect of the army of misfortunes' dust, that my hair is disgracefully gray before old age. If a single hair on your body bends crooked, every hair on my body stands straight up in dread of it. I would make all those tongues, fine as hair, sing your praise, if every hair on my limbs turned into a tongue. If your cruelty tears me out by the roots like a hair, I still return to your head, for loyalty is my nature. And if with a blade you cut me off your head like a hair, I still fall at your feet, for my heart wanted your love. My poetic gift has shrunk into its hair, since the biting cold of my chilled breath is fed by winter. The cold sheds blood yet spares no hair, unless there is some trace of your wrath's terror within it. Your friends all wear fur now; from today the tearing of hair is the enemies' lot. The dark night grew long, drawn out like my idol's hair; the wretched day, like the world's fortune, shrinks and wanes. It is the month of Day, deep winter, and my only hair is on my chin; who feels warmth from such hair in this season? It would be pure madness to split hairs in verse, when today the only profit for skill comes from generosity. Every hair on a wild beast's back in the desert has sprouted from my eye like an eyelash. Whoever today is not tucked into his fur like a little imp, even if he is an angel, throws himself at the fire like a moth. My body, like a lover's heart, is pledged to a hair; my soul, like a candle's wick, stands upright in fire. One is the sun and the other is fur; my heart's longing for idols' faces and tresses comes from here. Like the descendants of the Prophet, it is fitting to keep hair, in this season, for anyone of the People of the Cloak. My chin trembles so over its hair because in this season fur is the most precious of all things. With what shall I shave off a hair like a razor, when all my capital is this sharp-cutting blade of a tongue? I came out of my skin like a hair from dough, so that we are not upon a hair, nor a hair upon us. With such a covering, if the whole earth turns to ice, no harm touches your hair, even if it touches mine. If you promise me a fur coat for such verse, and if hair should sprout on such a promise, so be it. Today I see my body, thin as its own hair, wrapped in fur, for the dust of your door is healing kohl for my eye. As frozen as this servant has come in from the cold, if he springs back to life by a hair, it is all from your bounty. The price of this fur must not be a note or a voucher; hair takes no warmth from a promissory line of ink. All this hair I have laid on the saddle-cloth of verse: if I wear it, it wards off, so to speak, the cold of the air. Though this poem looks like a saddle-cloth of hair, every single strand of it is finer than a hundred silks. My verse is a hair-clasp set with the jewels of order, by which the bride of speech is made fair with adornment. My mind shoots hairs with its arrow, and no wonder: in a single shot it is peerless, like the arrow of heaven. My mind goes to the heart of meaning like a hair, for from sharpness it grew eloquent like the teeth of a comb. I have woven verse into verse in one place; weaving poetry this way is not the usual custom of poetry. Even if two or three couplets are hairless, hear them too, for my hairlessness is not confined to poetry alone. This servant's speech is a chin, and hairless is better, for everyone's desire is for a smooth chin. O exalted one, from whose giving hand all year long every destitute person's affairs run in order and ease. I know you as unique in the world, for by your generosity the office of kingship is wedded to the poor's need. Buy for profit, for it is priceless and cheap, whatever is of the goods and wares of skill, praise, and eulogy. The business of verse and poets has sunk so low that there is neither renown of applause nor hope of reward. This servant hopes for a better regard from you than this, though you do what befits you without being asked. Begging is a trait so bound to poetry's essence that whoever you called a poet, you called a beggar. If the beauty of my poem has grown much hair, no wise man will fault it even for that. If I did not fear the reproach of the count of hairs on my head, I would raise such lovely meaning that you would call it a virgin. This poem has grown long like my beloved's ornamented hair; let the ordering of verse end here, for it is time for prayer. May your ill-wisher's neck be bound with a collar made from that very hair that rose upon his chin.

You are the lord of the world, the backbone of Khojand's house; the very heavens rose up to serve you with all their soul. Your sapling grows in the garden of knowledge and virtue, and by your insight what was hidden rose into the light. When your speech lifted the veil from the face of thought, what did wisdom say? What magic has risen from these words! The world had grown old and was collapsing all at once; this young fortune rose to lend it a hand. It seems your firm resolve struck, and the earth sank down; the sky, seeing the grandeur of your rank, rose to its feet. The age let out the cry 'God is great' when the arrow of your will sprang from the bow's chamber. On the first day your hand set the custom of giving, a roar of dust rose from the very being of sea and mine. Your finger settled on the pen and proclaimed aloud that safety had fled from the treasure of ocean and mine. Like a hedgehog aimed at the foe, from his own body, in place of each single hair, a spear rose up. The lily boasted of freedom because of your nature; the garden cypress rose to become its servant. The radiance of your judgment shone at midnight, and a thousand dawns broke at once from every horizon. The pupil of the eye chose to cleanse itself with earth even amid water, from the fine dust that rose from your threshold. Your enemy was pure leaven of misfortune; he stayed sour, so long that he rose only for a scrap of bread. Wait, and let them adorn the bride of your excellence, for she has just now risen from the bed of learning. The blessing of your gracious breath reached the garden; the sick, feeble narcissus rose from its sleep. I will not describe my longing with the pen, because for this very reason both pen and fingers have fallen from my grasp. My state at parting from your presence is like a lover's when at dawn, in anger, his heart-stealing beloved rose and left his side. What a slacker I am, yet I still expect a robe of honor, as if such an elegant young man had come from Isfahan. Great one, hear a tale: the day before yesterday my heart suddenly rose up against me, quarreling. Saying: The season of the master's bounty has long since come, yet you lie sleeping and will not rise for it. Why do you not recall it? It seems that from silence the speaking child of your mouth has fallen still. In anger I told it: Enough, why do you chew this nonsense, that so-and-so slept while so-and-so rose ahead? Go, sit at ease, for your due will reach you; if it lags two days, the world hasn't ended. Such was the exchange, and the right is on my heart's side; how can one turn away all at once from fairness? The delight of that turban will never leave my head, for the crown of Khosrow rose from the very same place. From that honor my head rose above my whole body, and from this envy came moaning and wailing from my flesh. Since the turban never rises from the cold, one should never rise forever from beneath the turban. Suppose I did rise up from my own turban; could I ever rise up from the turban of masters? Do not blame your servant, for the root of this trouble first rose, at any rate, from that open, giving hand. By the help of your kindness I will get a turban too, even though the very means of that help has vanished from between us.

Fate has turned my luck away, so my hand can never reach the beloved's curling hair. The heavens would never rise up against my power if, for one night, I could hold the beloved in my arms. I would draw a hundred thousand hearts out of every twist of that hair, if only my hand could reach the beloved's locks. Patience, youth, heart, and soul, all lay caught in that grief; with the water of my tears I washed my hands of all four. Whoever laid a hand on that snake-like coil of hair has surely stepped on a serpent's tail. Grief comes easily to hand from every side, but this one thing, a comforter, never falls within my grasp. Like a sleeve, my work has slipped from my hands, yet the beloved will not withdraw from such handiwork. O heart, if you ever get a chance at peace, do not, for God's sake, let go of the hem of that beloved. Your love-play with the beloved is a game of the head; since you cannot match that stride, walk away and let go. Leap up bravely, like a man, from the well of the beloved's chin; grip those two musk-scented ropes with your hand. O painted hand, what a hand is yours! Look, once again you are openly stained with the blood of my heart. If the beloved's hand does not labor to shed lovers' blood, why does the rider keep it belted for slaughter? The arrowhead of your teasing glance is lodged in my heart; if you do not believe me, come, bring your hand and feel. The parrot of my reason, craving your sugar lips, beats its hand upon its head like a fly caught in syrup. Union with you never came without the pain of parting; no one lays hand on a rose without the wound of its thorn. One night I tasted your ruby lips, and still, from their sweetness, I lick my hand like a cat. It is longing for the chain of your hair that makes my hand ride a reed stalk madly, like a fool. Longing for your face, I am like a mirror, forever propping my hand beneath my chin in waiting. This clay bead of my body would drop like a pearl into the water if I pulled my hand from these weeping lashes. I would pull my feet free from the toil of your grief, if the favor of the great and noble reached to help me. Sultan of the sacred law, Sa'ed, who at the hour of decision binds the very sky with his mighty hand, The hand grew five branches at its top for this: that from the touch of his generous bounty the hand was overwhelmed. For that reason the pearl named itself an orphan, so his hand could gently place a crown upon its head. In his time the tyrant's helping hand withdrew; the falconer's hand pulled back into the raw sleeve. The hand of the sacred law leans upon his very being; that is why, for pride, it beats its hand upon its chest. O you beneath whose gravity the mountain's hand lies pinned, whose grandeur has raised its hand above the fortress, You lift from the dust and raise to the sky whoever, like scattered dust, reaches a hand toward your hem. If a man's soul does not truly lie in the hand of destiny, then what is your place, O renowned hand? By your good fortune, whoever kissed your hand once or twice became, like a raised sleeve, a bearer of the banner. When the strength-testing might of your anger plants its foot, or in fury strikes its hand at the mountain's waist, Your foe's hand is closed by stinginess, while yours, in these times, is a hand of boundless giving. Because you have flung your enemy behind your back, his hand is forever in mourning, like a grieving man. Like a pillow beneath your hand, the sky, at the head of the court, folds its hands before your door like a servant. There, where your hand rests at the head of the sky's court, the gatekeeper lays his hand upon his chest to admit the daily crowd. If your dread shouts a warning to disaster, then, like a cypress, it holds its hand back from all commotion. The fingers instantly bow down in helplessness, when the hand tries to count the weight of your giving. Who is Karun beside your generosity while your hand exists? No one would reach a hand toward such a lowly figure. The free men of the age are your possession, because over all of them your hand holds sway with bounty and wealth. You are the sun of fortune, and by your splendor even the low dust turns to gold if, for instance, you reach a hand toward it. Like a jug that lost its head at your terror, your envier, in his panic, struck his hand upon his head. With all his own resources, your foe, spinning about himself, keeps raising his hands like a plane tree in despair. Your enemy's hand is 'wide open' only in this: he keeps it stretched out on the roadside, begging. The autumn wind gilded the hand of the branches, because for your sake the Creator held out His hand. Whoever emptied his side of you, like a plane tree, was left holding his hands before and behind in poverty. And whoever comes bare before your bounty, like a pine, at once, like a cypress, gains a thousand-handed robe. You laid a hand of grace upon my mind, or else I would have washed my hands of this whole affair. My poetry is only a first attempt, since the virgin thoughts did not yield freely to my will. To receive your endless bounty, see how I have kept my hand ready, lined up in rows. I have brought forth and drawn out from my grasp a poem whose hand has reached the royal pearl. See the virgin daughters of my mind: like buds, they raise their hands over their faces, ashamed before you. In the garden of your praise I am a nightingale who has won the prize in this land, brought from Hamadan. A bird whose melodies are this fine even in autumn, how will it sing when spring renews its hand? I laid this poem, adorned like a beauty, upon my hand, for on festival days the hennaed hand looks lovely. Your enemy keeps offering up his camel-hearted courage as sacrifice; that is why the star of the Sacrificer has drawn its hand to the work. Live forever, for your enduring kingdom has laid a firm hand on the very hem of the Resurrection. Your survival and eternity itself made a pact, and then shook hands upon this agreement.

You generous one, in whose praise even the universal Intellect has worn out its tongue. The earth became dust beneath the feet of your resolve, while your bounty rubs against the heavens like the river of paradise. The sea and the mine closed their hands in defeat the moment your open-handed giving spread its fingers wide. The stars do only what your fortune commands them, down to the very root of their teeth, with all their being. The pen found its bond with your fingertip; that is why it now weeps gold as ink. The inkwell set its heart on praising you, and for that its mouth is smeared with musk. For a while now your noble mind has been left in peace from this servant's headache of words. I have caused you only a slight trouble, one I have refined of all its idle filler. In these past day or two, your servant too, by your good fortune, has found some relief and opening. Above a hundred thousand virgin daughters, last night a son showed his face. He hurried well to arrive, as if he had heard the fame of your name. Quickly arrange his name and his livelihood, for a new joy and celebration has increased around you.

You who boast that your heart is in love: happy for you, if your tongue agrees with your heart. Put down the instruments of sense, fancy, and illusion; travel alone and light, for the path is narrow. Ask the way from reason, an elder who knows the One; do not follow fancy, a hypocrite thief. Rise beyond the heavens if you mean to journey; even this dust around the tent is where night raiders strike. Leave yourself behind and go until you reach Him, for the one who outruns himself is the one drawn near. Open the inner eye, but keep watch on that eye too, for it also is a field where lightning flashes deceive. Hear the eternal call with the ear of the heart, not the ear of the head, whose channel is struck by thunderbolts. For anyone truthful on this road, giving up his life and drawing a breath are the same, like the honest dawn. You have shut your heart tight in this ten-sided body like a bud, then you claim single-heartedness: that too does not fit. The demon has puffed you up to think you are an angel; your lustful ego trusts in this flattery. The sun of truth is veiled behind your shadow of self; otherwise the whole world is a place of sunrise. How could you taste that private nearness with God, so that your drink is pure wine and your station is gardens? Does the man who knows the truth seek serving-boys and maidens? When was the true lover a slave of lust? Why lift your head to the sky, blazing with pride like fire? Were you not, at first, only a drop of spilled fluid? For a mouthful you wear the patched cloak and say 'I am a Sufi,' with no shame before people and no fear of the Creator. Set aside the double-faced ways, drop the coarse pretense; pull out a thousand nails, for they are all obstacles. You say, from fear of death I will hoard my provisions; you know Him as the One who withholds, but not as the Provider. Place no trust in the bond you have with anyone, when your very existence slips from you moment by moment. Your going to the prayer-niche is idle as a hanging lamp, while your inner self burns and your outside dangles empty. Why make a mere chain of appearances a collar on your neck? Is it not enough that you are bound by so many ties? Your reason is a demon's lamp, your tongue a half-done work of the ghoul, your ear a window of greed, your eye a sinner. The truly human one in this world is the one whose gaze, like the world's chief minister, is fixed on the truths. Masud Saed, whose generous favors of every kind go ahead of his aspiration toward the people of merit. Through the blessing of those precedents and the power of those aspirations, fresh fortune reaches him each moment from the unseen. In the garden of noble character he is the lily; in the orchard of Abu Hanifa's school he is the poppy. Good fortune, reined in, obeys the sign of his judgment; divine aid keeps pace, saddled beside his resolve. No fine point ever escapes his shining mind, just as the sun always passes over the smallest particles. In the sacred valley of Muhammad's law his knowledge is like oceans and his forbearance like towering peaks. On the field where his majesty shows its face, the king of the stars ranks no higher than a pawn. Whoever presses his lips against the dust of his threshold no longer even speaks of the water of life. Bravo, you of praised qualities, whose presence gathers the good of so many people. Your being, among the gatherings of the age's sons, is like moonlight in the heart of the darkest nights. No wonder if delightful meanings lie in your handwriting; do not doubt that fine sugar can hide in the dark. The revival of learning is folded into your words; it is as if your breath matches the breath of Jesus. If the miracles of saints break the ordinary, your noble deeds break through even those ordinary limits. In your presence, for those who gather the sciences, Gabriel's mighty wing serves as their cushion. You are the eye and lamp of the people of truth, for the lights of knowledge rise from your inner mind. Your works are graceful, your meanings subtle, your gifts abundant, and your chapters full of fine nuance. Rank is noblest when it is safe from any rival; your high office is so complete it is free of any peer. Through your dignity the law rules over the kingdom, and through your care the kingdom keeps step with the faith. Your judgment counsels where discord cuts; your pen mends where the sword tears apart. Just be yourself, until the fruits of your judgment ripen, for this young man is still only now coming of age. That is no hand: what is it? A wellspring of sustenance. That is no pen: what is it? A key to locked doors. It is no mere reed you raise in your blessed hand; to the mind, its very form seems a speaking revelation. The knot of need is untied by his existence; the hand of hope finds a companion in his tongue. The virgin veiled in the unseen is the daughter of your thought, and that lean, yellow, weeping pen is her devoted Vamiq. The ink rises to its neck and over its head: see how skilled this dark swimmer is at swimming. It so tunneled into the treasuries of secrets that it deserved to be cut, for that is the punishment of a thief. Its head is the seat of speech, its waist the place of logic: how fitting that it is a speaker head to toe. The coin of speech gained value by the stamp of praising you; the market of merit thrives on your street. My lord, I have no share of your service, because the many kinds of disappointment of these days block the way. The maidens of your praise are my thoughts and gifts; for long now they have embraced me with sincere longing. A pause in the duties of favor is no fault, since they are neither rebellious nor divorced from you. The failing is not yours in nurturing the people of merit; it is our own age of fortune that will not cooperate. Though many boast loudly in their verses, there is a difference between the one who truly speaks and the one who merely brays. Why should I stretch out the prayer, when all around you is a pavilion of God's own protection?

Look at this shape: you'd think it was some intricate marvel, or the branches of the Lote tree joined to the tree of paradise. Or the fenced enclosure of the garden of reason and knowledge, or the planks shaped under the adze of Noah the messenger. Or the shields of the Daylamites raised in battle, or a model of the turning sphere of heaven itself. Its cut is like the patchwork robe of the first saints; its arrangement is one of the strange shapes of a rampart. In that blessed spot stands the tree of intimacy, marked out and reserved for the holy presence alone. Since reason has compared this shape to the sky, the rectangular form is now judged the noblest of all. Like a hermit it stands apart from the crowd on the edge; because of this, its place is paradise and its reward comes early. Its leaning back against the wall in the corner of the room comes from dry piety, not from laziness or ease of livelihood. It resembles the mangy, pockmarked sky, for its surface is studded with fixed stars. Like a mirror its whole body is face upon face, so knotted, like the curls of the beautiful, in endless chains. From head to foot it bristles so with barbs it is no plain cloth; and if it is cloth, it is velvet. You who are sweet as sugarcane and full of joints and form, ranked above all the souls of the plant world. Your essence is a collection of different arrangements, in which all the geometric shapes are laid out in detail. The imaginings of the shrewd fall short of grasping your nature; even Mani's tablet is helpless before your patterns. The parts of your being locked hands together so tightly you'd say it was a ball and hook on the robe of purity. For every gap and split that was there at first has now been turned to union and harmony. You are a carpenter of faith, firm in principles; yet in this respect your nature leans toward withdrawal. Your composition is the fine family tree of a noble root; from it is explained whatever this chapter leaves brief. Though your face is scarred and pitted with pox, your outline is balanced by the proportion of its parts. You are shelter for the back and a lamp for the eye; no wonder if you win the fullest share of good things. If your heart is bound to carved and inlaid patterns, fitting, since a vegetal nature is set in charge of you. You had one hand and a hundred thousand designs at first, and this last hand of yours is not that first hand. The wind finds no way into the joints of your bones, nor water into the channels of your sweat. Your fractions came out correct at the moment of multiplication, for your breaking and mending balance each other. Your form is a tablet, and across its pages are tithes and verses, fifths and grids all at once. From your joining the foundations of the rules are laid; from your grace the robe of building is trimmed with a hem. The foot of the eye stays trapped in the frame of your shape, as long as the fine details of your uprights confuse it. Designs carved on your chest like a rogue's tattoos; your arm scarred and battered like a wrestler's arm. The blows of mallets do not shift your body from its place; you'd call it courage, though it comes from a sluggish nature. Or, like hypocrites full of knots and twists, the propped-up wood serves as your dwelling. To guard the house your body became all eyes, though your form is like an eye that dozes off. You have a lean, dry side, yet by the blessing of your shade the whole world's flanks grow fat. In you are a thousand cracks and more, and through these cracks the eye finds entry into the garden of paradise. Out of envy of you the aloe wood sits on the fire; striking its head on the stone in grief for you is the work of sandalwood. Since your frame took on the shape of a bee's hive, the palate and mouth of reason grow ever sweeter with honey. You have made yourself a pillow for the People of the Bench; and this rank of yours comes from reaching a great old age. Your face is adorned and your stature groomed; from this your capital of acceptance is made complete. Your composition, from fine craftsmanship, is like my solid verse: light in meter yet heavy in meaning. As long as the amulet on your arm was Azud al-Din Hasan, your praise is the writing on the pages of these seven idols. A sun of high rank, on whose scale of ambition the seven climes weigh no more than a grain of mustard. Like the diving depth of thought, his knowledge has no end; like the overflow of reason, his giving never stops. The tip of his pen is the gauge for the scale of reason; his capable hand is the whetstone for the sword of generosity. By his knowledge the subtle particulars are proven; by his fury the universal rules are shaken. As long as his generosity tends to people's hopes, all sides of wealth are utterly neglected. It is fitting that in the roll of his praises should be set every superlative that belongs to the highest degree. You lordly one, before whom the swift-turning sky is weighed down, like the earth, by the burden of your bounties. Like the garden of Iram, your palace has become a house of pillars; that is why in its comfort it rivals adorned paradise. I have carved out a poem from my nature, where the least shaving of its wit outshines the verse of A'sha and Akhtal. If anyone says, or has ever said, the like of this, then let my wealth be forbidden and my blood made lawful to shed. Do not let fate trample beneath the feet of every base wretch the one to whom the whole realm of meaning has bowed. Bear the grief of this servant, for in all the world, after God, I rely on your generosity alone. To the taste of reason, any speech that is your praise is sweet as life, however long it runs. Enjoy your wealth and rank, for in the court of destiny the writ of your life is sealed to run long.

Refuge and model of the age's rulers, foremost in the world: it is you, whose command time itself obeys. Beside your grandeur, the whole span of the turning sky is like a mere point, imagined faintly in the mind of reason. Desire has gorged itself on your generosity, so full now that it needs something to help it digest. The candle of the heavens, the sun, bends so fully to your will that in your grasp it is as soft as a lump of wax. Remembering your kindness, spring lays out fresh anemones, sealed and stamped like a signed decree. Why else would the dawn keep sneezing, again and again, unless the sky had caught a cold from the fragrance of your nature's flower? If the lion boasts of its courage before your awe, forgive its ravings, for it is only feverish. Gold, in its two-facedness and its pallor, resembles your enemy; that is why the passing days keep it despised and downtrodden. Sometimes it is broken, sometimes clipped, sometimes struck; now bruised by a slap, now battered by a blow. Sometimes the shears cut it clean in two; sometimes it is stoned with weights on the scale. Sometimes it is dragged down the row of the marketplace; sometimes its assigned place is in the blazing fire. Sometimes its face is creased with the wrinkles of the mint's stamp; sometimes its cheek is scarred by the bite of the assayer's teeth. Sometimes it is spent, sometimes buried in the ground. See how your enemy, in its likeness, is nothing but wretched. All the sciences and arts are slaves to my eagerness to serve you, though reason condemns eagerness as a fault. When I ask fate for more, it answers: what more could someone want, when he already has such a noble master? The wheel of fate, so used to such tricks, cast me out from your very circle, like a knocker left at the door. The sincere faith of this servant in this service is threaded, clear for all the world to see, like beads on a string of knowledge. With deprivation so tightly gripping this servant's life, what room is there for robes of honor, for eloquence, for custom and reward? The dust of your feet is passed reverently from hand to hand; see, then, how the pupil of my eye is left with none of it.

The sea of sorrow has no floor and no shore; the affairs of this age have no order at all. We searched the orchard of time like a pomegranate, but not one smiling lip appears without a heart full of blood. The bent-backed wheel of heaven, with a hundred eyes, searches the world for ease, yet finds no trace of it. More than a thousand arrows of cruelty are lodged in my heart, hidden so deep that not even an arrowhead shows. I have drowned so completely in the water of my own tears that nothing of me remains visible but wailing and lament. The shirt of my patience has torn so many times that the hem is gone and no collar can be seen. However far I go in search of my heart and my beloved, nowhere is there any sign of either of them. Everything in the world has an edge, a limit; so why does separation alone have no end in sight? I made myself content with a mere fantasy of happiness, yet even that, from utter deprivation, does not appear. There is so much fire in my chest, by the ton, that no scent even rises from my burning heart. What kind of chessboard is this, where in the chaos you cannot tell king from pawn, or master from doorman? How could the smallest specks find any rest in this land, when even an anvil is not safe from the storm of disaster? Who could strike the ball of desire in the field of grief, when so much dust rises that the field itself cannot be seen? They say: seek joy from the hearts of madmen. Why then does this state not show itself in a fool like me? I told myself I had carried my life safely out of disaster, but the grief is so vast that even life itself no longer appears. We sharpened our teeth, thinking the feast had arrived at last, but where? from where? not even a single tooth remains. Wherever I look, left and right, all are enemies, and from among all the friends, not one is to be found. The water of life lies in darkness, and around us there is only darkness; the living spring is nowhere to be seen. For a lifetime I have kept my eyes on the road, and still not even dust from the beloved's horse's hooves appears. I said the crescent of justice would shine from the sky of the kingdom, but the sky itself is hidden behind endless clouds. The world of religious law has gone dark, for within it the light of Abu Hanifa's school no longer shines. O leader of the age, take up the reins of resolve, for the army is in disarray and no sultan is in sight. O Jesus of this age, what do you have? Breathe a healing breath, for this pain has grown chronic and no cure appears. A dawn has risen in the east, yet still the banners of the shining sun do not appear. They have brought a letter of victory to this land, but it is sealed shut, and its heading cannot be read. The demons still rule the court of chaos. Yes, no wonder: Solomon is nowhere to be seen. If the people have made worshiping the calf their habit, yes, it is fitting: there is no Moses son of Amram in sight. O you against whose words not a single pearl has risen from the sea, nor shown itself in any mine. O you whose equal in the arts of eloquence is nowhere to be found today in Iraq or Khorasan. But why speak of this? The world-roaming imagination searched far and wide and found nothing on this side of what is possible. Is your pen sugarcane or a parrot? How strange: a sweet parrot that stays unseen within its sugar-field. Beside your lofty ambition, this low heap of dust is no great marvel that it should count for so little. For on the scale of the heavens, when the weighing is done, no seed of wild rue shows up in either pan. The sky does not bother to strike at your enemy, because from sheer smallness he is not even visible to its eyes. In the absence of your stirrup, from the blows of injustice, the very foundation of Isfahan has vanished all at once. Until you take the key of victory into your own hand, for now no Muslim's deliverance is anywhere in sight. The grace of your favor, which was my companion in the cave, has for some time now left me bewildered, with no sign of it. They say a friend appears at the prison door; so what is a servant to do? At the prison, no friend appears. If I am nailed to the cross by my four young children, what has become of him, that he gives no sign of any kind? May your fortune, sincere and clear, be revealed; for that is your life, and its span has no end in sight.

Last night my reason, which needs no interpreter, lifted the veil from hidden things. It fell into conversation with me and suddenly struck up a cold opening line. It let slip a few words still wrapped in their sheath, words whose covering should not be pulled away. At last, without hesitation, it lifted the lid off the burning trays of truth. It said: Watch out, take charge of your affairs, for fate has set up a trial for you. The baker has cut off your daily bread; prices have climbed steep as flood-swollen water. The income you once hoped for is gone; usurpers have carried it off, piece by piece. In the palaces of kings the hand of need has folded away the means of bread and the custom of the table. You, with ten or fifteen mouths to feed, how can you keep your women's hearts content now? If the master does not know your state, the tale must be brought to him this very moment, so that he may lift this burden from you, just as he has lifted it from others. In the midst of this alarm I said to it: disaster has reached beyond every limit. The dagger, in cutting short men's lives, made no distinction between old and young. On the tips of the spears the blade's tongue proclaimed the end of all safety for the people. Sudden calamity stripped well-being away; it took security and honor from home and household. The mace took its seat in the dome of the skull once it raised its head from the shaft. The arrow set its thought on the liver in the heart, once it drew its shaft from the quiver. It chose its resting place beside the eye, the instant it was lifted from the house of the bow. The Kabuli dagger, sharp by nature, cleared the film of the body from the soul's eye. It made its lodging in the caravanserais of the breast, laying its brick, once it lifted its flank from its place. It descended into the black core of the heart, the arrow-tip, once released from the fingertips. On the streets, because of its bloodshed, one can hardly pull a foot free from the mire of gore. They lift the head from the body like a candle's, from anyone who cried out in fear for his life. Death's beak pecked at the throat of everyone who opened his mouth to the notched arrows. The talk of the sword grew fierce; war, in that hour, loosed the tether from its tongue. The army of ignorance charged in and wiped out every trace of skill and learning. Two loaves of bread are granted only to the one who took up the spear instead of the pen. The sword so utterly overpowered the reed pen that it carried off its innocent head just the same. If I make a request now, they say the holy law has lifted all obligation from so-and-so. It said: even if things are as you say, has the strife really wiped Isfahan off the earth? Surely it has not, all at once, abolished the custom of eating bread from the world. Ask for your yearly grain and your usual allowance; a custom cannot be undone in any way. Only a raw, shameless poet ever gives up hope of the lords' customary bounty. If the grain is scarce, there is ready cash; you can take it for nothing yourself. He would not raise a scale to weigh out gold, he who has done away with scales altogether. It has been a long time since his giving stripped the sea and the mine of the honor of their wealth. His pearl-scattering hand, through generosity, undid the very thread that strung the pearls. A tremor ran through the spear's bones when he lifted the frail reed pen. The night rested easy, for his justice removed even the trouble of the watchman's cry. The heavens fell at the feet of his ambition when it raised its head above the roof of the sky. We were still in the midst of this talk when the dawn lifted its head out of the far West. The sun drew its blade from the sphere; the night took fright and gave up its very soul. The clamor of the announcing drum arrived; it set down what it was holding and took up its beat.

Do not ask how the full moon turned away from you brokenhearted when it dared to stand beside your face. From shame at your beauty it hid its head in the world, so that it will keep wandering the earth until judgment day. The crescent shows the bare bones of its side, so thin and yellow has the moon grown from envy of you. If the moon is reduced to this by envy, imagine the state of anyone who falls in love with that moonlike face. The whole floor of the earth became a rose garden from the color of your face, and the air itself grew fragrant from the scent of your hair. Your tiny mouth and my longing for it: a subtle secret hidden away inside imagination. Teasing, I told the rose, 'You look like my beloved!' It burst into light laughter, did it actually believe me? First your hair spread its fire beneath your side, and only then did it become such a tyrant. Anyone who tastes the sweetness of your ruby lips is like a parrot circling sugar in an iron cage. Since no one has ever plucked fruit from a cypress, how could I taste any from your stature, a jasmine grown tall as a cypress? My beauty, now that with the blade of your glance you have all at once conquered every kingdom of hearts, tell me, what does your sorrow keep circling my heart for? What deafness makes it loiter around this humble thing? My heart drank a draught from the cup of union with you, and by your love it only grew more drunk than before. It must be that your eyes take instruction from the master's pen, for the pupil of your eye has become a breeder of magic. The world will fill with jewels, narrow as your mouth, now that the master's hand has come to aid my sight. Lord of the ministers of the age, Fakhr al-Din, whose dust of foot became a crown upon the head of the heavens. The glory of the vizier's hand, whose passing retinue raised such dust it turned dark in the eye of the sky. Know that the sun draws its wealth from his resolve: with a single glance the sun made itself a rich mine of light. If the dawn tried to boast before his judgment, see how its breath turned to a dagger in its own throat. Whoever, like a bud, does not fill his heart with love for him, has a head emptied of sense, like the hollow narcissus. So sincerely do people recite his praise that, like the opening prayer, everyone knows his praise by heart. Like the sun, whichever way he turns, the stirrup of his blessed will rides on to victory. Like the narcissus, whoever does not bow his neck to his command is left barefoot and empty-handed like the pine. The spark of his resolve, from its sheer soaring, settled on the ceiling of the heavens and became a star. How splendid a gift, that on the stage of excellence your praise became the ornament of the bride of speech. The lofty sky, for all its turning around itself, never found in its folds a treasure to match you. The earth belongs to your court; that is why the sky's surface is pitted like this with the kisses of the stars. The sound of your fame may well beat the five royal drums, for the four corners of the world have been assigned to it. By a turn of the hem of your grace anyone whose soul was scorched by grief, glowing like a censer, found relief. The heavens washed the face of the sun in the water of your loyalty; from the reflection of that face the world grew radiant. A body whose form your grace shaped in its mold need not bear even the burden of gratitude to life for its living. I was comparing the sea to your generous hand, and at once, inside the shell, the drop became a string of pearls. The heavens tried to make a copy of your mind; it failed, and that trial burned away and became the substance of the sun. Your palm is the wellspring of generosity, and they call that palm the one that rose above the seven green seas. By the light of your judgment the world became Khosrow's cup; by the breath of your character the sky became a ball of amber. The utmost hope of the lords of this age is exactly what came to you at the very start of your fortune. Not everyone who takes up a pen will become like you, nor does everyone who ties on a belt become like the constellation of Gemini. If the sky did not thirst for the blood of the enemy of your glory, why has it made its whole heart a mouth gaping like a wine cup? The mere thought of your hand passed over the heart of the bud, and for that reason the fine details of its inner self turned to gold. Your awe narrowed the world upon the heavens, so that, like your enemy, it bent double and curled into a ring. Is it not from dread of you that the sky is bewildered like a circle? Take it as a point: your foe has become all head, all body confused. Now that your court has granted an audience to the people of meaning, from now on it is forbidden for them to hover at any other door. Talent had nearly perished from the hands of the world, but by your fortune its affairs took a different turn. Though it wandered from door to door like a rumor, it has now been nailed fast to your threshold by the nail of your bounty. Speech that lay like a scroll with its head bowed low grew, in longing for your praise, a hundred wings like a book of pages. Time gnawed its own hand in envy at the single favor that fell to your servant from you. This one honor from the world is enough for me: that by your fortune your praise became the very face of my book. When I laid before my dull talent the task of praising you, it grew ashamed of its own weakness and broke into a sweat. It ought to feel shame even before your words; suppose it all turned to the sweet waters of paradise, it would still fall short. From the ray of a single glance that fell on your servant from you, see how bold that impudent one has grown, that he brings you poetry as a gift to your court; surely from the height of his ignorance his head has been turned. If this vessel is no match for Noah's ark, how did your hand guide it toward Mount Judi, its safe shore? A vessel must always have an anchor; for this vessel, the weight of your servant became its anchor. I wanted to say a prayer for your good fortune before this, but from fear of wearying you I cut my words short.

The freshness the world drew from the breath of spring, the sacred law drew from the breath of the fortunate leader. The lord of the law, who is the judge over the heavens, took a favorable omen from his blessed face. Because the year's beginning stands at his threshold, spring received its crown, the green robe of honor, from him. The morning breeze, that supplier of the perfume box of flowers, kept a fragrance from the master's noble nature as a keepsake. There is a resurrection in the fields: the body that the earth held prisoner for six months comes alive again. Like the dead who cast their shrouds from their shoulders, the blossoming trees put on that very same garment. The old tree whose hair had fallen from its head, once it was bent double, took up a walking staff again. The blessed breath of the morning breeze reached it: it grew young and fresh and embraced its beloved. Within a single week, atop the meadow, it became a bride, was joined to her groom, and conceived. When the thunder beat the drum of good news, the cloud came and scattered royal pearls in tribute. The garden air was cool, and the poor narcissus slept drunk, and at dawn a hangover seized it. Where is winter's silver, that autumn's gold devoured? For from these two faces the earth gained a base of wealth. One sank into the soil, the other blew away on the wind; happy is the one who took a lesson from this state. The world played gently on the silk-strings of the hours of day and night together, and took the harp in its arms. When the king of the wandering planets saw that the affairs of the world had all come to rest upon the pillar of the faith, in the manner of service to him, for the New Year, with his own hand he firmly grasped the neck of the Ram. In the season of spring, a shepherd made the master's flock agreeable with a head or two of the Ram. Though the astrologer reckoned the good and ill of time's turning from the almanac of the seven planets, when he saw the master's judgment and the perfection of his planning, the governors of the sky counted him the eighth. Fate looked into the reckoning of his life span, and out of what had been destined, took one as a thousand.