English
In Praise, Asking for a Fur Coat: The Ode of the Hair
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.