In His Praise Again

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.