Composites

You whose name is never spoken except in honor of God, the whole line of prophets found its order through your being. In the hand of reason, the light of your striving is a lamp; over the appetites of the self, your forbidding is a bridle. A single flame of your spear's fire is the light of dawn, and a single strand of your black banner is the hair of night. Your saddle strap is the firm handhold that Gabriel grips tightly for the sake of his own honor. If your form had not come as a mercy to the world, who would have brought us God's message? Adam's clay was kneaded for forty days for this reason: so the palace of faith might be completed with the brick of your being. You whose name the glorious Throne has inscribed upon the pages of its own existence, for the sake of your name. What boiling cauldron of the heart do you hold, that in the kitchen of «I am not like you» they cook you dishes of every kind? In the procession of your glory, the Holy Spirit fell behind, helpless, at the station of 'there is no place for him beyond this.' What gift can we send you from afar? All we hold in our hands is a blessing upon you, and peace. Jesus foretold your coming through the ages; by the blessing of that word, his breath gave life to the dead. You whose feet's dust rivals the Throne itself, the sealing of prophethood is sealed upon your perfection. Because of the loftiness of your rank, your shadow never appeared on equal terms with the sun in the field of visible things. The morning breeze girded itself for your victory; have you seen the wind lend its aid to a lamp? Gabriel became the diver in the sea of revelation; the essence is God's word, and your tongue is the jeweler of it. Out of humility you chose the way of poverty, yet from your generosity even the sea gained its wealth. In a single delicate breath, bent on the nearness of two bows' length, you passed like an arrow beyond the arching heavens. The sky set a hundred thousand eyes upon your path, so you would take no step except vanishing from its sight. The heavens dressed in all their finery and came onto your road, longing for the chance that you might glance at them. You passed on, untroubled and free of them all, to a place where Gabriel did not know the way. Without any intermediary, into the treasury of your secret heart came such jewels of grace and tender care for the servants. In God's presence, just as we in yours, our tongue of praise is bound fast by its own helplessness. The proof of your miracle is the divine word, not like Moses or Jonah, whose signs were snake and fish. You who raised your banner from the summit of the Lote Tree, you whose healing is written in the sura beginning 'Alif Lam Mim.' The flight of your aspiration's bird is in the space of nearness; the private chamber of your thought is the eternal world. The arrowhead in your hand is a spring of pure water; stone and clod, in your eyes, are the world-revealing cup. You have drawn the sword's edge across the pen, so the sword's command runs freely at the head of the pen. You are the light and eye of both worlds; every night you stand until dawn, steady as a candle on a single foot. The carpet of prophethood was spread out for you while Adam had not yet brought his baggage from nonexistence. In the arena where the fire of your wrath blazed up, truly not a drop of moisture remained in the sea's mouth. When the water of your kindness first found its voice, the fire drew nonexistence into its mouth and fell silent. Angels long for the dust beneath your feet, yet out of pure grace you sat among earthly people. Your light came before Adam, your shadow after the prophets; that is why light and shadow, first and last, are joined in you. In fear of your honor on the day of resurrection, the fire turns its back and takes to flight. You whose lofty spirit makes the sky the ground beneath you, whose first step falls upon the seventh heaven. If the spirit of God came forth from Mary's sleeve, a hundred Marys lie within the sleeve of your soul. Whoever followed you became beloved of God; how far a rank, from where to where it reaches! Destiny weighed itself against your resolve, and the earth proved lighter than a gnat's wing. You whose eye piercing arrow flies from the bow of «you did not throw», you whose standard leads the marked cavalry of God. From explaining your words the mouth fills with sugared sweets, and from remembering your character the breath of reason turns to amber. Your firm resolve, aimed at rightful victory, shattered the army of disbelief and folded it like Chinese silk. The turquoise sky would never have touched the hand of being, had the name Muhammad not been engraved on that ring. Adam, whom a single grain drove out of paradise, now gleans from the harvest of your intercession. You dispel the darkness of the world of souls, for your word is the sun and your breath the true dawn. Your palm taught pebbles to sing God's praise; your heart made the shadow of the spear a storehouse of sustenance. In the hour of nurture your very nature is mercy; in the hour of battle the vanguard of your army is dread. The peacock of the lote tree is but a barnyard bird before your rank; the depths of the divine throne are the sanctuary of your Kaaba of glory. When the hand of your prophethood struck the drum beneath the cloak, the echo of its sound seized both east and west. Your miracle working finger, a keen edged sword, split the moon in two with a single stroke. How far can any creature reach in praising you, when the mighty God has called your character magnificent? By your nurture you are father to a whole world of people, yet in the tongue of fate you tenderly bear the name orphan. God shaped your very being in eternity so that, like the path of truth, everything about you came out straight. He robed your essence with his own attributes: at times generous, at times tender, at times merciful. There is a secret in the two middle letters of your name, for in seven places the H and M point to it. Who could stand firm against your army in its charge, when its arsenal is the dust and its champion the breath of the breeze? You whose enemies' death is like the wasting sickness of the east wind, you whose foes' blindness is the kohl of thin air. The blazing sun is a mere reflection of the light of your face; the pool of Kawthar is a single drop from the ocean of your grace. In the gardens of revelation your tongue is the nightingale, and in the seas of the Quran your character is fragrant amber. Reason cannot grasp the special qualities of your essence, nor can nature guide itself through the subtleties of your law. By the light of your guidance the swift steed finds its way, and in describing your miracles even the pebble becomes eloquent. Whoever comes to the door of your law without you is like a lock in hand: baffled to the roots of his teeth, useless as a key without its match. Like a bud, anyone who catches even a hint of your character becomes smiling, tender of heart, and pleasant company. Whoever breathes a sweet breath from the fire of his heart glows beneath the hem of your generosity like incense on live coals. The one your acceptance lifts up is like a sword: though stripped bare, he is rich in worth. But the one your rejection casts off, like an arrow, is left with a bloodied mouth, hamstrung, and dust on his head. What use is a water-bright dagger in your grip? The very edge of your blade is water at your enemies' throats. The world and its people are both worthless to you: one a fistful of dust on the head, the other lowly dust itself. Where your power reigns, the heavens cannot turn; where your wrath falls, the earth cannot stay still. Whatever came into your hand you gave away, and more; such generosity belongs to one who feels no shame at poverty. A mind that is not the dust of your feet brings only headache; a fortune not from you does not endure. Where your law draws the sword of its command, bare reason has no shield to choose. Though the count of all the world's people comes from your bounty, in the realm of your giving there is no such thing as counting. Neither the sent prophets nor Gabriel himself have leave to enter the veiled chamber of your private nearness to God. So that the babbling of unbelief cannot accuse you of madness, the pen that traces your script does not ride a mere reed. The prophets themselves have taken refuge in your shade; who is there whose work is not settled beneath the shadow of your glory? You take pride in your poverty, and all of Adam's line takes pride in living beneath your banner. The sea of your praise is so vast that the swimmers of speech find no crossing in it. The moon-faced golden crescents have been slapped by your hand; humble poverty, dark of face, has become your intimate companion. You, whom God's own grace has praised through God himself: where do we stand, and where does the praise of you stand? Who are we even to breathe your praise, in the presence of 'By your life,' 'But for you,' and 'By the morning light'? God's grace gathered all the perfections of creation into one thing and gave them to the mother of Muhammad, the Chosen One. While Adam had not yet washed his hands of the clay of his making, you were already the master of the house of prophethood. You are utterly free, yet your emblem is servanthood; you are the king of both worlds, and your royal tent is a simple cloak. You held the trappings of the universe too paltry, so your resolve gave nothing that fell short of your nobility. Though all the prophets came before you, like followers they all took you as their leader. If the honor of your shadow ever fell to earth, the dust beneath you would become healing salve in the sun's eye. The herald of 'so he drew near' on the night of intimate closeness barred even the Holy Spirit from that innermost privacy. The marketplace of your mission drove, with the hand of perfection, the nail of abrogation into the door of the prophets' shop. The pearl-scattering cloud is a pupil of your hand: it goes only where your hand points it. You have reached the place where there is no place; you have seen what no one else has ever seen. No prophet can wish to reach the height you have reached, for you arrived at that place of blessedness. Every seeing eye owes its sight to you, for you rose above them all like the light of the eye itself. You are mercy itself; it would even be wrong of me to say you were created merely for the sake of mercy to creation. The four chosen companions you drew close to you are the indispensable pillars of the house of the sacred law. To Abu Bakr the truthful you offered a portion, sharing every sweet food you tasted in private. For Umar the discerner, whom no poison could harm, you nurtured an antidote out of your own care. Until the very edge of the Day of Judgment it trails along, the robe you cut to fit the frame of Uthman. There was none in the religion's world more clear sighted than Ali, for into both his eyes you breathed your own soul. From these two lovely earrings, meaning the two he received from you, you hung a ring of gratitude in the ear of the highest heaven. You whose mercy is the nurse of Adam's children: even if we are worth nothing, buy us all the same. Though I, your servant, compose verses in your praise, I compose praise that is unworthy of you. You have no need of praise from a hundred thousand men like me, yet by it I draw a little nearer to your God. I am making myself great among the people, not truly performing a service for your sake. I have spoken much idle nonsense for the sake of every kind of person; now I make amends for it by praising you. For a good name in this world and the next, I make my own great name a beggar at your door. I am utterly in need and your nature is utterly generous, so I turn my face of longing toward your bounty. I am helpless in the grip of creditors who wronged me; I come begging at the street of your generosity. Do not strip me of my honor, for all my life before the people I have claimed to be your servant and devoted to you. I am ashamed of my sins and stained with wrongdoing, so how can I dare wish to meet your face? Yet I know I will not be turned away in despair from your kindness, if I seek help by calling on you in prayer. If the condition for your intercession is that we bring grave sins, then we have plenty of goods of that kind ready at hand.

Since my beloved drew that dark line of down across the rose of a cheek, my mount of patience is saddled and ridden off at every moment. The heavens, with hennaed fingers, keep raising the finger of astonishment, biting the star cluster of the Pleiades before that radiant face. Though the field of love makes even a king move his face like a pawn, and reason a mere foot soldier, his beauty advances it like a queen. You planted poison inside a box of sugar: see the bitterness of the answer that sweet ruby lip delivers. The dark curl of his hair robbed every perfume caravan the dawn breeze carried from Tibet and China. If he lets that dark line of down display the whole of beauty, he turns the pages of Mani's painted gallery into worthless scribbles. When the heart seeks escape from the chains of his infidel curls, it turns its face to praise the pillar of faith and religion. One whose resolve outpaces the racing steed of the sun; one whose calm the wild colt of the skies cannot match. So, my life of the world, how shall I contrive to reach you? How long shall I bleed my eyes and heart in the grip of your absence? The viper of your curl coils over emerald green: why should I keep casting spells, dazzled, upon your onyx eyes? If for one night I could clasp both my arms as a collar round your neck, I would make the dust of my feet a mantle for the sky's own shoulders. And if one night I became the cup bearer of your sweet ruby lips, I would drug separation with the opium of your curls in the cup of union. My heart, a ball in the polo curve of your hair, found the field too narrow, so how can it gallop about with patience? The fire of your love has kindled the ether within my heart: to quench it, how can I turn my eyes into a rushing river? Since praise of the world's high lord is woven into the core of my heart, with his help I will drive the torment of your love out of it. King upon the throne of knowledge, pillar of faith, chief of the world, the shade casting sun, the minister marked by royal favor. You from whose generosity sea and mine cry out in dismay, you from whose nature the fountain of life and the river of paradise flow. You cast the dice of your judgment into the bowl of heaven, and from the reflection of its pattern these seven stars arose. So that a mediator might string the necklace of the rational soul, pearls and gems rose for reason from the casket of your speech. And to perfume the senses of the dwellers of holiness, a ball of ambergris rose from the dots of your script. From every thorn the breeze of your nature grazed, at once, by the aid of your grace, a branch of narcissus sprang up. Is this a pen, or a stalk of sugarcane? For from its tip a hundred boxes of sugar rise for the parrots of reason. For the eye of Saedi, I mean for his very self, each month a crescent rises from the sky like the crescent mark of a horseshoe. Before your bright judgment, what is the sun? A mere flame. Beside your pearl scattering nature, what is the sea? A worthless beggar. You, the hope on whose bounty the destitute rely, the resource whose ample means come from that open handed grace. The nine heavens would be trampled to nothing in the dust of non existence if the seven firmaments dared match your rank for a single moment. The couriers of thought move only at your command; the shining ones of the sky bend their desire to your decree. The hand of fate would tear away this dark blue veil of the heavens if it failed to show your bidding obedience from the soul. The tip of your pen brushes the tress of the hidden lady of the unseen; the world of coming and going lies beneath the sole of your ambition. Without the curved calligraphy of your knitted brow, the heavens place no trust in the decree of the court of events. Whoever does not serve Saed as closely as letters cling together, may both his eyes be void of their black centers, blank as an empty circle. Ever since the enemy saw the candle of your fortune ablaze, from that grief his heart is stone and his harvest burnt to ash. You who by high resolve stand above the turning of the world, and by your noble essence are the crown of Adam's children. Your generosity has easily solved the hard riddles of poverty; your judgment is the trusted keeper of the guarded secrets of the unseen. The gleam of your countenance is the envy of the light of Moses; a breath of your grace is like the reviving breath of Jesus, son of Mary. You have made the stars of the sky a sword of your resolve; your grace has become balm for those the age has wounded. From your blessed, auspicious arrival at the banquet of the heavens, Venus's harp cried out in joy through its high and low strings. And to watch your procession from this enameled canopy, the shining ones came to the roofs of the seven celestial vaults. The banner of your rank, its finial beyond Saturn, went out and returned again under the shelter of God's grace. On this journey you rose ever higher like the sun, whose end, from the farthest reach, is always a fair homecoming. O lord, may the lofty palace of your worth flourish; beside it, may this polished marble mansion count as the humblest foundation. In the school of faith, where wisdom kneels to learn, may the scratch of your pen be the master of the speaking soul. Whatever silver and gold lie hidden in the belly of the mine, may all of it be marked as the gift of those two open handed palms. Since greed grew drunk and ruined from the cup of your giving, may the inhabited quarter of the earth flourish beside your justice. You whose thanks and praise are the refrain on every palate and tongue, may your eternal being ever be far from those the age has wounded. Whoever, like the lily, unfolds a tongue in your service, may he stand forever free from the bondage of fate, like a cypress. The lowly one whose water the fire of your wrath has spilled, may the harvest of his life be scattered to the wind by the hand of your awe. May the influence of the heavens turn away from your realm; may the business of fate's court depend upon your effort.

You, with your radiant face and jet black hair, have laid a whole world to waste, night and day. May the chain of your curls stay forever unbroken; the mirror of your beauty rests in the hand of the moon. The very image of life appears before me whenever I gaze at your ruby red lips. Both your tresses do nothing but win hearts; that is why my back is bent double like them. Not even the dragon's head and tail can do to the sky what your hair does beneath your cap. The pupil of your eye is like a reigning king, and your brow above it is a black canopy over his head. The army of your hair was so vast that your cheek came to review its ranks. Yet a single breeze scattered it all apart, like my lord's enemy blown from the road by dust. The chief of the world, the lord bearing the mark of kings, the backbone of generosity, the rising fortune, the sovereign of his age. The face coated silver in the tint of your cheek; the breeze took its scent from the tip of your hair. The languid, drooping narcissus is a copy of your eye, but a flawed one. Her nose, the down, and her mouth set together form the very shapes of the letters alif, lam, and mim. Your hair is coiled and curled like the letter jim, your black beauty spot the dot beneath the jim. Your smooth cheek is like the heart of the devout; your tiny mouth is as narrow as a miser's eye. Do not look upon the gold of my complexion; good fortune cannot be bought with silver. You hold an orphan pearl in your mouth, your sweet ruby lips like kindness shown to an orphan. Your mouth is a single, indivisible gem; it can only be split in two by speech. It would be a shame to pierce such a ruby for anything but praising the pillar of the faith. You, whose generous hand, when the tongue recalls it, makes the sea foam at the mouth with envy. Before your bounty the Nile is a mere mirage; beside your gentleness the very soul is thin as wind. Your hand and your tongue keep filling the skirts of the last age with gold and pearls. Serving you is the fruit on the branch of the body; praising you is the jewel on the blade of the tongue. In spite of your heart and hand, your enemy turns his eye and cheek into a sea and a mine of tears. Your giving outdid the swift flying one; that is why its head grew heavy against it. Through your kindness to those beneath you, you can plainly see all you have found. Your foe is groaning, sallow, and bent double, forever in his death throes like a drawn bow. May no unbeliever ever face your enmity, especially in the way your wrath has laid it out. The nature of the world turned away from cruelty and began the practice of humanity. Security suddenly knocked at the door of the world, and the hand of your army threw it open. When the cloud had no more bounty to give, it called out toward your heart and hand. The arm of your fortune did to the enemy what your fingertip did to greed. The needy ate from the table of your generosity, took abundant bounty, and left with a full belly. In the end the realm became your captive, no matter how much it played coy. Once more the bird of your glory took flight and settled atop the canopy of kings. All these signs of good fortune that exist were brought about by that lofty lord's high resolve. State and faith are adorned by you; the holy law itself has prayed for you. You, through whom the days have come to fulfillment, whose grandeur has given the world its order. Reason and spirit are the chosen ones of your majesty; dawn and dusk beat the drums at your gate. Like a farewell that heralds separation, the affairs of your enemies fall into ruin. Your task today is the rule of the world; this high office is now yours in full splendor. He who was your fiercest adversary now takes refuge in you with his whole heart. This lament is your servant, for the striking is in your hand and the ink is complete. Any head that holds a meddling mind I keep forever bound to the line of your command. Your grace has shown itself even in hardships, as the festival dawns from the crescent of the fasting month. Everyone has reached their goals through you, except me, the burnt hearted one, and that is all. May the banner of your fortune be victorious; may the evil eye stay far from your good fortune.

Your rank rises above the sky through your resolve; the eye of the heavens has never seen your equal. The moon is the finial atop your grand dome; the horseshoe of your sky-crossing steed. You bind and loosen the world's designs; with the wisdom of an elder and the fortune of youth. Your pen turns your enemy's day to darkness; the world of law grows bright from your judgment. The stars in the sky, like the studs on your shoe, plant kisses on the sole of your foot. Whatever secret is sealed in the hidden world is but a cloth in the hand of your knowing mind. In the studded coffer of the sky, your lofty station is trampled underfoot. Your canopy is the shade of the glorious Throne; your court reaches the summit of a towering palace. The world lies beneath the hand of your resolve; all creation is a dependent of your grandeur. The green-clad angels of the heavenly realm are residents in the precinct of your presence. The new brides of the mind's inner chambers are raised and nurtured by your praise. The heart of the sky has filled with blood, like a bud, from the sheer force of your majesty. Truly, the tempting soul within has been subdued by the sword of your purity. The sky, that blue-robed Sufi in its nature, is a servant at the lodge of your high resolve. Praise be to God, for through your reign's good fortune the world's affairs have found their steady course. Your foe threw dust on his own head in defeat; the sky itself lay its head before you in the dust. Your generous hand is the goal of every hope; the dust of your feet is a crown for Saturn. Preserved upon the tablet of your thought is all that was inscribed on the page of eternity. Before the light of your luminous mind the eye of the sun is clouded and dim. Amid all its yeses, saying yes, your enemy bows before you as at the primal covenant. Your wrath is the champion of that host whose least vanguard is death itself. The pearl is dazzled by your bounty; for this it is written down as beneath your hand. Your enemy is baseless, like a fable, yet beaten by the people, like a proverb on every tongue. The whirlwind of your vengeance, little by little, kindles fire out of the water of life. You whose mind is bound to reason itself, by whose life the sacred law is sworn. The fire of your thought has brought the neck of the wind into the bend of its lasso. It has come to this: the lofty sky feels shame before your threshold. Out of nothingness a child is born to your foes, ring-collared like a turtledove in mourning. Like a sparrow held by a falcon, your enemy will remain bound by both feet until he dies. To ward off the evil eye today, your enemies' house serves as burning wild rue. In the end, all that rising your foe enjoyed for a few days was only the last flare before the fall. Yes, yes: a lamp without oil flares up at the very moment of its dying. Since the world first knew the rule of conquest, it remembers no triumph like this one. Under your protection our wounded soul at last won justice from the turning fate. The sharp-pointed spear pierced your envier's body at every point it found. Until the sword saw his base nature, it set no tongue of blame upon him. Though in your enemy's brain, out of pride, fire and wind were forever in conjunction, the wind died down and the fire was quenched, for the fire of your sword gave birth to the water of victory. We swept away the game board; we played our hand and won it all. Time, pregnant with strife for nine months, laid down its burden and gave birth to God's triumph. Your worth is the bird and the stars are its seed; your judgment is the candle and the dawn is its moth. Your enemy's heart, caught in the net of chain-mail, is seed for the flying arrows. Why does your foe rattle the chain of your anger and hate, unless he is a madman? For joy, your friends have become all heart, like a brimming cup. For flight, your enemies have become all feet, like a comb of many teeth. Your envier, who was king of the base, is checkmated, for he has no home left. God has granted you every possible triumph and victory; now is the time for thanksgiving. Because of you, gladness fills every body; in all the world only sorrow is left alone. As long as the world endures, may you be a just seat of power; may the flood of your generosity be as far-reaching as your justice. You through whom every heart's wish is fulfilled, may the wish of both worlds be granted to you. May the fire-colored tears of your envier burn on from the flame within his heart. Hoping for your gift, foaming at the mouth, may even the sea stand before you as a beggar. When I set out for the world of your worth, may the placeless heavens be my first stage. May the dagger of your wrath that adorns you by slaying foes be tempered with a killer's poison. From the breath of your creation, may my virgin thought conceive, like Mary bearing the spirit. Since both earth and heaven are subject to you, rejoice, O victory, may it bring you joy.

Gone are the days when tyranny darkened our light, and sorrow settled in beside our hearts. Gone is the time when, as if from every door and wall, fate raised the sun like a drawn sword against us. Gone is that season when, like a bright red flower, our pale faces were crimson within from a heart's blood. At last that heart, which had been strained and tuned like a harp in torment, breathed a note of joy like a flute. At last the one whose heart was tight with grief like a bud opened its mouth in a sweet laugh like a flower. That man whose share of pleasure had been mere wind grasped in the hand, like a plane tree, now dances foot to foot in delight. The one whose heart lay crushed beneath a stone in grief, like a tulip, now rises up in joy, like a tulip. The sun of grace has shone again from its house of honor; the Jamshid of the faith has found the ring of fortune again. The world has taken on another nature, the times are changed: the sultan of religion, the king of the sacred law, is triumphant. Is it truly us, who have received our heart's desire from fate? I can hardly believe this state has come to me. The age of the master's justice and his sun-bright sword: look how bold and shameless this dazzle is. No, rather it is the care of the master's saddle-strap that keeps his dagger drawn like an armed guard's. Thanks be to God that for the king of the sacred law all the means of success and fortune are provided. From the faces of his enemies and the lips of his friends, the ground of his court is all crimson and all gold. He sits on the golden throne like a gem in a ring, while his foe bends its back before the world like a knocker on a door. A hundred armies of foes, and from him a single act of resolve; a whole city of sin, and from him a single turn of mercy. Fortune has turned its face to this court again, and made the world witness to its own servitude before him. The turning age left two stages behind for him, when his swift, light-reined purpose set out on the road. What last year slipped from the army's grasp, this year he won back from the hand of misfortune. When strife marched from existence into nothingness, he first made its resting place from his four cushions of state. The foe had set up a strange board of chess, but through his own blundering he ruined the whole game. The black hand had the upper hand and faced him down, then left the square, meaning to declare check. Just then his good fortune showed its shining hand again, and when the foe looked up he was suddenly checkmated. It was a hell, and all at once it became a paradise: by the blessing of his joy-bringing arrival, Isfahan. You whose ambition has planted its foot on the crown of the heavens, you whose form has taken its place in the heart of meaning. You whose wind of vengeance is like night snuffing out light, you whose bright judgment is like dawn where the sun takes counsel. Both the mirror-bright dawn and the musk-dark night have become pupils learning your speech and your script. The servant's waist and your envier's leg are bound tight, so long as in this age your pen unties every knot. How could the sun find its way to the window of dawn at night, if your judgment were not its guide? This fountain of life that has become soul-refreshing is, if you look, but a single droplet of your kindness. Now you too, along with all the world, give thanks for that pillar of grace and generosity God set with you. What greater favor of God upon you could there be than this: that your going was such, and your coming like this? Whatever task your standard points toward, the face of the sky is ground down to its very teeth to do it. The sun's lamp is soon snuffed out at dawn's first breath, if it dares glance against you anywhere in the world. When someone would test out ruin and fortune, let him judge by your enmity and your friendship. Every unworthy wretch who plots against this threshold soon finds his own just reward tucked in his sleeve. Every light head that grows heavy against you, they lighten of its burden by parting it from the neck. We have seen it many times, and it never ended well: the fate of anyone who schemes against this house. Since all your work is like the sky, what can the foe do, unless he could tear a breach in heaven itself? Your enemy's deeds follow at his own heels, until they lay in his lap exactly what he deserves. Joseph came out of prison and Jacob back from his journey, and they rejoiced at the sight of one another. The horizons of the sacred law took on new splendor and beauty, when the sun of his face rose over the mountaintop. He is rising ever higher, and so, like his father's name, the mountain lifted its head high, its foot a shield in his infancy. It is no wonder if he made his place on the mountain's peak; yes, no surprise that a gem should rest on a blade. So it might carve his place, servant-like, from its own shoulder, the mountain had girded its waist from the very beginning. The sea is his birthplace and the mine his origin: who ever saw a gem more renowned than this? Every gem born hereafter from the mountain's core will have its cheek turned crimson with shame before this jewel. In the cradle, like Jesus, he worked his miracle; on Sinai, like Moses, he rose in rank. Just wait and see how his affairs will turn out: the very start of his work was an ascension. He came out pure gold, cleansed of all flaws, when the wheel of heaven tested him against the mountain stone. The mountain stands proud, firm, and green because for a day or two our master rested at its side. The money-changer of the sun had filled the mountain's skirt with gold and gems to scatter before him. The mountain held firm before the radiance of his face because it learned the way of steadfastness from his dignity. His foe wished to lay siege to his high glories, but found no way to it except his own fortress walls. If his foot struck stone, now the sky itself has fallen at his feet to beg his pardon. Though blood has dripped from the stone at parting from him, the world's desire was fulfilled when he came forth from the stone. We have bought your service with our very soul, and chosen it for the good fortune of both worlds. We do not count our service as a favor to you; we were ourselves created for your service. Fairness at your court is only a pretext; otherwise, through serving you we have reached the sphere of Saturn. In your kindness, forgive us if we have drawn any dust from your retinue across our eyes. Do not drive us off like strife, for in the end, like safety, we too have run a while at your stirrup. Besides the sighs of the breast and the fire of the heart, we have tasted much of the world's cold and heat. It would be fitting to lay down heart and soul as sacrifice, since at last we have seen you as our heart desired. That you are lord of the age is proven to the heavens; the marks of your kingship are clear across the horizons. As long as fortune exists, may your fortune last, and as you wish, may the world go according to your will. And if my heart beats for the sun rather than for your love, may this bright noon turn black as an Ethiopian night. Your hidden foe is the farthest of the west's ends; may his foot be caught, like a clever bird, in the snare's trap. As long as there is white dawn-thread and the order of time endures, may the means of your sovereignty be set in order. Every blessing and good fortune born of your presence, may it all be scattered before the coming of the master Nizam. Since a rough stage has turned easy, may your mind hold the saying: 'the noble are ever generous.' Though the servant is far from your presence, may this throng crowd at your gate year in, year out. May Isfahan never be without the sun of your fortune; may the world not exist on any day your shadow is gone.

The fire of your face has stolen the rose's color; your cheek makes the season pour wine like a rose. Beside your face the garden's rose is a mere nuisance; that is why the roadside rose hides itself among the thorns. The rose's delicate body has turned bloody all over, so often does your lovely face press against its thorns. For a moment in your embrace the rose could not fill its mouth with laughter until it had wept blood at your side. If the rose is gone, so what? May all its freshness be yours; your cheek is keepsake enough of the rose for us. Suppose I admit the rose is shamed before your face; thank God I am not shamed before the rose. The reflection of your face would mend it in an instant, even though the rose's warp and weft have fallen apart. The rose could be like your face, but only on the condition that a line of dark down should sprout upon its cheek. Where the arrow of your glance uses souls as its shield, the budding blossom drops its arrowhead in terror. When the pistachio saw your soft green down so full of sweetness, it set its tongue mocking against the sugar. When the down took hold around your mouth, I said: the parrot has tucked the sugar under its wing. So that sugar may be your lips' slave to the roots of its teeth, it binds its belt before it even rises from the earth. You are at war with me, yet without your knowing, sugar-like pearls pour from your mouth upon me. If your breath blew across the world for a moment, all the earth's cane plants would turn entirely to sugar. In my eyes your mouth has a taste all its own; yes, fresh almond makes the sugar sweeter still. I have set the price of your kiss by your face; I know everyone would sell their sugar for gold. Since your pistachio lips broke open with sugared speech, much ruin came upon sugar from that pistachio. No wonder sugar bows its head to your down; that rare down lays its head upon the sugar. You, whose face and mouth disgrace the rose and sugar; is your lip a face, a rose, or sugar? Why are your face and lip the source of my mad longing, when rose and sugar are the very cure for such madness? What your rose and sugar do to water and fire, no water and fire could ever do to rose and sugar. A cloak of green and a robe of fine linen: deliberately the rose has torn them open before your face. Because of your face's color and your lip's taste, rose and sugar have fallen onto the tongues of nightingale and parrot. My heart is as tight as a bud and a box of sugar, for there is no telling you from rose and sugar. My tears are all rose-water and polish, because your image has revealed rose and sugar in my eyes. Know it by the master's justice that in my eye and heart rose and sugar sit together, like water and fire. Sa'id, sultan of the sacred law, who with lofty ambition has bound the sun's very crown with his resolve. Your generous hand abolished the very word 'begging for gold'; your bounty set the custom of gold's undoing. By the giving of your hand gold went into every sack; whoever passed by, gold went into their bag. In the days of your existence, the mine and the scale press stones upon their hearts from longing for gold's company. Gold has become such a fugitive from fear of your bounty that only the image of gold sprouts in the narcissus's two eyes. In the eye of the bud they melted gold, because beside your justice gold set itself up as a rival. In the creed of your giving, by your pen it is lawful to spill the ruby-blood of the people and their golden wealth. For fear of your might the scale dares not draw its sword-tongue, though its body is bronze, in the face of golden Zal. Beaten so often, gold is cheap and wanders the streets; your noble palm shows no pity for gold's plight. A stone follows at its back wherever it goes; from door to door it runs like a yellow dog. If the pearl did not owe its life to your hand, why are so many pearls hidden within your speech? Hoping to tie itself to you, the pearl hangs from its string all year long. Whoever became your ring like the gemstone, from then on such a pearl sat enthroned upon gold. The naked sword that had no water on its blade now, from your generosity, wears a pearl at its waist. If a cloud dripped upon the garden in memory of your hand, the buds would find pearls in their mouths like oyster shells. It would be no wonder if the iron-faced sword, from shame of your lips, never again spoke a pearl aloud. First the greedy cloud takes the sun's golden coin from the world in cash, and only then gives back a pearl. When was any pearl like you, since even in your envier's eye it took hold of the world by the power of your tongue? You, at whose threshold of worth the heavens come begging; beneath your ruling ring lies the turquoise sky. So much did that blessed palm pour out gold and pearls that now gold and pearls are muddled with your palm. Day and night, from star and sun, from your giving, the age drew gold and pearls up to the sky. In fire and in water, gold and pearls seek their safety and refuge from those two auspicious hands. You might say your foe has become a furnace of gold, for inside is fire and outside are gold and pearls. His face crushed flat and his belly pierced with holes, from blows and thrusts your enemy looks like gold and pearls. It is no wonder that the leaves of the tree and the raindrops become gold and pearls through your good fortune. The dry land, the sea, and the mine cast to the wind their claim, for from sea and mine you give out more gold and pearls. How many will turn pale and red from now on, ashamed before this well-measured ode of gold and pearls. Since the pearl has found a place in your servant's circle, no wonder it turned its face from the sea and the mine. As long as it is possible, may the world's chief hold his head high; may the sun beg for the shade of his glory. Your dread has become the extinguisher of the age's turmoil; may your care set the whole world in order. May your wrath spread its claws like a plane tree, and your foe, like a palace, hold up his neck only to be slapped. You, whose sugared words are rich like almond kernels, may your mouth stay open in a sugar-sweet laugh like your pistachio lips. When the dark single rider of your pen mounts up, may it charge triumphant over the household of destiny. May your enemy be scorched of heart like a tulip from its inner fire, and melting like sugar from the water of his own eyes. A long life is better than anything in the world; you know it plainly, so may your life be long. May you pass this blessed season, and a thousand more like it, in joy and gladness of heart.

Ever since you let your musk-scented hair fall across your face, you set a fire of envy burning in the censer of my heart. That long tress you have draped across your shoulders, throw it around my neck, for it is a lasso made of amber. Since you fastened beauty's robe on like a bud, a hundred times you have knocked the crown from the tulip's head. The many thousand hearts you have stolen from lovers, you have tied into your hair and knotted tight. If your heart allows, give me back just one heart of mine, and imagine you have dropped only one out of a thousand. In longing for lips to be laid upon your lips, you have poured blood into the cup and goblet of my grief. We are like a bud, our heart bound tight to you; you are a narcissus, your eyes fixed only on gold. That your hair reaches out to plunder me is fate's decree; but this sweetness of your ruby lip, where does it come from? My affairs, like my beloved's hair, are tangled and confused; my back is bent like the curve of my darling's brow. Grief drank a draught of my heart's blood and said: this is the joy of the only one who is happy in this age. Is my heart alone the captive of such sorrow, or is a joyful heart simply rare in these times? The way my heart pays the due of every grief, in fairness, the whole realm of love belongs to it by right. Do you know what the vision of your face said to my eyes? Lord, where is this place forever wet with dew, night and day? Do you want the state of my heart clear as bright day? Ask the dark night, for it too shares the secret. If only there were between me and my beloved a bond as close as the one between me and my grief. Though my heart is caught in the ring of your hair, for want of union with you it stays, like a knocker, at your door. You are a child, yet the aged sky is no match for love of you; you are the soul, and no one can escape the soul. You spilled my blood with a single arch of your brow; you are one whose bow needs no arrow. Your beauty wrote a line upon your face so lovely that all confess no scribe could write a finer one. What does this mischief-seeking wind want from your hair? Are there not heaps of musk and perfume in the world? As long as the cypress is spoken of beside your stature, the comparison, though true, holds no charm. In the drought of your love, thanks to the flood of my tears, no part of me stays dry, not sleeve nor hem. How could your lashes find a place in every heart, if not by being the reflection of the great minister's pen tip? Masud Saed, the one beneath whose hand the heavens lie; the sky's arrow is but a single shot from his grip. Your words become the envy of the Pleiades' array; your worth becomes the crown of the green dome of heaven. Against your judgment, what can the dawn gain but this: it wears itself out in vain and ends in disgrace? Do you know where the sea's saltiness comes from? From the tears of your enemy, flowing into the sea. The pen that speaks your praise is a strange marvel: a bird without a soul, yet it begins to speak. When wisdom saw your pearl-scattering hand, what did it say? Behold a peer that stands equal to its own peer. The passion of your mind's inner daughters is ripening; its heart's secret is revealed through tears of ink. At the moment of reproach the pen said, with its creak: many a head is left dazed in the passion of the mind. This dark heap of dust becomes a rose garden by your presence; the eyes of the stars grow bright by your existence. When your wrath sinks its teeth into the enemy's affairs, it easily swallows down even the ox and fish that bear the earth. Raise the wind of destruction like fire from their souls; how long will your patience, like the earth, keep swallowing them? The bloodletter of the age bound your envier's hand for this: so he could drive death's lancet into the vein of his life. The strength-tester of your resolve, with mighty force, drove the bud-shaped arrowhead deep into the anvil's heart. Before the light of your judgment, the white hand of Moses at once, from shame, buried its head in its collar. If it was a miracle that the prophet's staff swallowed a whole plain of sticks and ropes like a serpent, then your pen, at every moment, swallows two or three times as many spears and lassos that coil like snakes and dragons. Since religious law is your dwelling place, you hold its hand, and it in turn holds your hem. O you by whose arrival the learned are revived, at your threshold stand I and the fortune of my fellow servant. Though the polished sword is rich with jewels, it still takes its finish from the side of your pen. From the hands of your servants, every moment there drips into your enemies' throats a liver-tearing water. Until it stood like a shadow behind your command, they did not grant the sun its staff of authority. If you cut out the pen's tongue, it still keeps its soul, because it reveals all the secrets of the unseen. Every weakness that befell you on the journey now lies behind you, all safety and good fortune. Far from the sun, the crescent grew feeble, now beautiful, sound, strong, and radiant with light. The sun's heart fled from awe of you, and the proof is its pale face and its trembling. The enemy is subdued and the friend is triumphant; and this is only the beginning of your fortune, so wait and see. The royal falcon of your fortune is taking flight; be patient, for it is only now opening its eyes. O you whose generosity has disciplined all wealth, may your fortune endure for long, long years. The painter of the mind has never sketched, even in fancy, anyone like you with imagination's pen, and never will till time's end. From the sky of Jupiter, from which men draw good fortune, omens are taken from your auspicious star. You are one whose resolutions the sky cannot undo, though it is so eager to overturn every condition. As long as a crescent like you shines from the heaven of the faith, the crescents themselves will bend their backs in homage. As long as the union of the celestial bodies keeps arranging that one like you should be born, master of good fortune, as long as such a great tree keeps growing to cast its shade, many young saplings will be uprooted from the ground, may your hand stay foremost on the seat of success; Lord, may your life be longer than all that exists.

How wonderful: with your face the garden rains roses; your cheek is the rosy glow that colors the flowerbed. The curl of your hair has broken the hyacinth's spirit; the beauty of your face has laid a thorn in the garden's path. Did you perhaps pass through the rose garden last night, that its very doors and walls are laughing today? As your promise grew weak, once and now, and your anger grew sharp, so the garden's market flourished. Where is the morning breeze, that with its sickly frame kept struggling with all its soul to nurse the garden? When it caught the scent of your hair and the color of your cheek, at once it grew faint and slack in its labor. The garden would have been a ruin if the master's grace had not, like the breeze, rebuilt it. If you have seen a graceful cypress-tall beloved, then look at the stature of that painted cypress. A robe of grace is draped over the cypress's height, but without you, who cares for a cypress at all? If you appear before the eye, there is good reason: the cypress finds its place along the flowing stream. For its uprightness the cypress resembles your form; that is why my heart is mad with longing for the cypress. Since your stature has set the cypress free, why should I call your height the cypress's equal? Perhaps the narcissus drank a toast to your stature, that it lies drunk and fallen at the cypress's foot. The whole face of the earth is blossom; everything beneath the sky is the cypress's height. Since the master's will inclines toward what is lofty, that is why my nature so seeks out the cypress. The plane tree, with all its soul, is a devotee of spring, since the hand of bounty is open wide upon the plane tree. So freely does the violet spill from your hair, so freely does it rise from your rose-petal cheek. The world has grown narrow, like your small mouth, so that the violet may cling to your ruby lips. This is the food of your languid narcissus eye: the violet mingling itself with sugar. What magic is in your weary eyes, that they raise a violet up out of fire? Why has your hair turned its head away from your face? Perhaps the violet is shying away from the tulip. The violet twists its foot back from the trace of your down, as though fleeing the garden. The tip of your curl is like the nib of the master's pen, that scatters violet ink over camphor. The bud packed its arrowhead with the fire of longing, so the water lily cast its shield upon the water. The smiling lips of the bud give people a sign of the bud's own ruined heart. It came in fresh-faced and opened its cloak; bravo, a hundred blessings on the soul of the bud! Now in a single breath the New Year's breeze will reveal all that the bud has hidden. Perhaps the tulip opened its mouth so that it might take the bud's small breast between its lips. The breeze scattered these ten millet seeds into this pouch of the bud. With its heart's blood the bud gathered a hundred petals, since the nightingale is coming as its guest. Like an arrow's notch, from the breath of the master's grace the arrowhead of the bud brimmed over with laughter. Like me, from love of the beloved's face, the breeze is sometimes a madman and sometimes a sick man. How lovely: the image of your face upon the rose garden, with your hyacinth hair drawn round the rose. Your coquetry is no disgrace to you; the rose's hem looks lovelier when it is fresh and moist. The nightingale's cry and the rose's laughter resemble the two of us: your teasing and my pleading. Did the rose catch on a sharp thorn, that its shirt was torn open like this? From afar, at dawn, one can read your green down by the bright lamp of the rose. From envy of your face and from my cold sighs, the blood has frozen in the rose's body. Is it from shame of you, or the master's wrath, that fire has flared up from the harvest of the rose? They all sell either the color of the vine or its scent, and drink their wine, alone, beneath the cypress. How sweet at dawn the nightingale's song; how sweet the nightingale's flight on the rose branch. The meadow is such a place of harmony: all rose petals and the nightingale's music. It is not right, in fairness, to bear the bud's heartache and the nightingale's disdain. The nightingale's constant friend, at dusk and dawn, is the sound of the harp and the cry of lovers. The breeze tore the garments of the lily and the rose, and so the nightingale's secret was laid bare. This rose-dome is delightful, especially when the nightingale's song echoes within it. I am the nightingale's companion in praising the master; have you ever seen a parrot as the nightingale's partner? The world sits at the New Year's feast, cup of tulip in hand, in memory of the master. If the reflection of his judgment falls upon the blossom, the star of the blossom will shine just as bright. And if it takes shelter in the shade of his hand, every blossom turns golden like the rose. Like his luminous wisdom, the blossom is born from its mother as a child, yet old. From his being, the withered tree drinks water and at once blossoms into silver and gold. From the bounty of his hand, one day like the narcissus the blossom set a crown of gold upon its head. The breeze held a trace of the dust of his feet, and out of joy it scattered blossoms over its head. It gave coins and received freshness in return, like the hand of the faith-nurturing chief blossom. Blessed Rukn al-Din, fortunate of arm, by whom the foundations of the faith were made firm. If the narcissus took his justice as its rule, it would not come into the meadow drunk. The narcissus lays its neck upon the dust of his feet, though it is proud with its crown of gold. The narcissus would do the work of the pupil of his eye if it could see his face from afar. If the narcissus was once a ruin in these times, it has now been made rich with silver and gold. If the narcissus saw the vision of his judgment in a dream, it would wake with bright, radiant eyes. It is no wonder if, for the sake of his inkwell, the narcissus turns black like a houri's eye. In the days of his justice, the narcissus dares not even glance at the veiled bud. How glorious the chronicle of your reign's fortune; blessed be to you the season of early spring. In the garden, as soon as the lily opened its mouth, it wore out a hundred tongues in praise of you. To keep guard for your servants, the lily displayed its watery blade. Like paper, the lily wiped clean the page of its cheek to receive the writing of your praise. The meadow made its gold ornament from the flower, for the lily was like the ear of your white steed. The lily drew up its watery dagger in its hand when it heard the name of your enemy. The narcissus took collyrium from the dust of your feet; the lily praised your generous hand. The narcissus gilded its two eyes with gold; the lily coated its tongue with silver. You thousand-voiced nightingale of the garden of the sacred law, refuge of the people, sultan of the sacred law. From dread of you the tulip turns to blood within the stone; from shame at your nature the tulip takes on its color. Fire is subdued by fear of you, and so the tulip holds it in its grasp each moment. By the blessing of your justice the world has grown so peaceful that the tulip smashes its wine cup against the stone. Wherever the breeze of your grace has passed, tulips spring up mile after mile. Though from the fire of longing, like your foe, the tulip keeps a heart dark as smoke, by the effort of your enlightening mind, it now wipes the rust from the tulip's heart. First the tulip washed its mouth with musk and wine, then it turned its aim to praising you. The breeze grew faint before the shame of your grace; the old world was made young by your splendor. When the New Year rejoiced at your face, it opened the treasure of joy. One by one, whatever coin of gladness there was, the New Year gave to the nature of your servants. The New Year delivered the record of its own servitude by the hand of the free-standing lily. Every day the New Year rubbed the curls of hyacinth and boxwood upon the dust of your threshold. The world prides itself on fairness, for the New Year learned the code of justice and equity from you. So long as, each dawn, the New Year gives the rose's harvest to the wind across the plain, may every moment be autumn to your envier's breath, and every day a fresh New Year to you. Qawam al-Din, may fortune be your companion; so it is, and so may it always be. May the exalted one live forever; may his hand be the fountainhead of generous grace. So that it may never break with the turning of the heavens, may the thread of your soul be twined double with his. Since his back is made strong by your arm, may his desire be granted like your command. You are the greater fortune, he the brightest moon; may the two of you be conjoined for years. May your ill-wisher be kept from every wish, as beauty is forever parted from loyalty. May the two of you be like light and sun to each other; may the world rest in the shade of your justice. May the breaths of the true dawn all say Amen to this recited prayer. May the cord of your lives, in safety, stay joined together until the Day of Resurrection.

When the musky lock falls across the rose of her cheek, it breaks the back of spring and shatters the glory of the garden. She roasted my heart on the fire of cruelty just to crush the hopes of her ailing eyes. I said, my heart is broken with grief. She teased: it is no strange tool, that it should break while in use. Do you know why hearts are so tight in her days? Because she keeps few and breaks many. Your heart is hard, my idol, and your servant's heart is fragile; against stone, glass must inevitably break. Your lock has broken a thousand hearts, and the wonder is that it shatters a hundred more at the stirring of a breeze. Your lock is a snake that strikes at every liver; blessed be the hand that could crush that snake's head. Each year the color of your cheek and the scent of your curls break the poor bud's heart and its whole market. Around your small mouth, that amber lock is like a hundred thousand rings of musk set with a single gem. Your lock is broken and your promise is false; your resolve to break our pledge is firm and true. The morning breeze carried a scent of your lock to the garden, and not one bud kept its cloak whole on its body. Your drunken eyes drove reason mad; look at the sick one who made the sound one sick too. For the beauty of your face, the down on your cheek is witness enough, though your claim was already true without a witness. What is this languor, this shattering of your lock and glance? Given all this, the desire for your lovely face is well founded. My worn heart is so drenched in blood that it cannot be told whether it is broken or whole. Each dawn the dark-working sky recites its lesson of cruelty upon your twisted lock, and gets it right. The thought of union with you never came out right for me; from a broken heart no thoughts come out whole. The arrow your glance drew from its quiver has a barb forged from the water of fire's own flame. When the rose recalls the reflection of your face, it fills the world with its own scent and hue. They told the bud it resembled your mouth, and ever since it has gladdened its own heart with this. Your heart of stone is harder than steel, and your eyes bore even the arrowhead's steel. They have scratched their faces and cut their tresses from the cruelties she inflicts on rose and boxwood. No falsehood ever came from the pledge of your stature; so why does it set the cypress free? The beauties of the garden paraded before your face, and the nightingale cries out at this disgrace. The lily stretched out its tongue in apology and said: what is our fault? This levity is the wind's doing. This is the age of the just rule of a vigilant, fortunate lord; it is your glance that sleeps and does injustice. He is the strong arm of faith and of the community; his very being is composed of spiritual perfections. When his generosity turned its gaze on the world's affairs, it cast the battle of the poor over silver and gold aside. In his days the pen grew sharp and eager, and, like a brain-splitting sword, it plunged headlong into its work. Lordship has fallen at his door like a ring-knocker, for he linked its means together like a chain. Behold, the rose's brow drips sweat from meeting him; behold, gold sheds its shield before his bounty. The sugarcane got knotted up because he tied knots into sweetness with his subtle points. It found a place in the eyes and ears of lover and beloved when it cast itself, gem-like, into the display case of his speech. The mountain stood firm in service to your dignity, from the day it bound a knot upon its waist. In the days of your justice the sword is given no water to drink, so, parched, it thrusts its tongue outside. Your custom is chivalry and your work is striving; you are the pillar of the realm and the support of Islam. Your pen has reached the peak of wonders; whatever it produces, it produces finer than the last. It sets foot on the carpet of Rome and paints like China; it lays its head in the black night and brings forth stars. It stands girded, aimed at the army of miserliness, and each moment brings forth a battalion of black script. Every shy meaning whose image no one has seen, it brings its head bowed into a curve so you may behold it. It is a mother standing upright, with clamor and cry; and the wonder is that all it bears are daughters. When it speaks of the tablet of eternity, how often it brings shame upon the page. This too is sorcery, for no one ever saw a beard-grower that brought forth such fine down so pleasingly. If the sea has come to the tip of your blessed finger, do not marvel that it brings forth reeds upon its head. When the person of skill cultivates itself, it makes the soul of Azod al-Din Hasan the image on the signet. First wisdom made gold and the world content with you, then made your name the essence of the house of Khojand. From dread of you the sword's courage turned to water, for fear it might raise the flames of sedition high. In your reign, whoever does harm even to a hair soon lays his head in the belly, like a razor. Ever since the creak of your pen laughed at the spearhead, how many taunts your banner has made from that laughter. Your palm shows such care for people of skill that in fairness no reckoning can count all it has done. Your giving does not lock the throat of pearls in a case, and your ambition does not shut satin up in bonds. To hunt down your desires, the world made a lasso out of the mottled rope of time. Every evening the sky, at the roof-edge of your glory, burned a star as incense on the fire of the twilight glow. The people of skill have come alive through your cultivation; the free men of the age have become your servants. May your fame reach everywhere like light; may the world's soul rest in your shade. May the child of hope, whose food is the milk of chivalry, be raised in the lap of your arts. May the dust from your steed's hoof be the resting place of your delight, and may both eyes see a musky pillow made of that dust. May every piece of gold that has come into the scale's eye be drawn up before its eyes by your generosity. May the water that freshens the gardens of hope run from the spring of the bounty of your fingers. May the breeze that opens the bud of the heart blow from the hem of your gracious character. If your grace does not paint rouge upon the tulip, may its blood be split from soaking up the lightning. As long as breath passes over the mouth of dawn, may your resolve go forward and your survival never end.

My love, with your magic you have bound the eyes of a whole world with these coils of hair you keep tangling upon each other. What kind of turmoil is this? Your love has stirred a resurrection across the world, yet you sit there untroubled. Truly, in that famed ruby mouth, tinged pistachio green, you are sweeter and finer than the kernel of a pistachio. You have shattered my heart with the stones of your cruelty, then turned away in mockery and knotted up your locks. The one whose heart you have pierced with the arrows of your lashes finds his remedy in the little casket of your ruby lips. O vanished patience, how cramped your ground has become; O restless tears, how bewildered you are. O hard-hearted beloved who taunts me, of course you mock, for you have no burden of love, you have escaped it. When everything is this tangled, knotted like chainmail armor, how can I knot my own affairs with your locks? Every evening when the sun sinks below the horizon, my soul, out of grief, sinks into a whole new torment of thought. My sigh rises to the heavens like Jesus ascending, while my tears sink into the earth like Korah swallowed down. Its blood turns to sorrow in my heart from my anguish, for how could any thought descend into a heart so full of blood? No heart that sinks toward that rose-red face ever lifts its head again out of the spring of tears. Each dawn when I tear open my collar with sighing, the blood of the twilight pours down the hem of the sky. The blood of my heart vanished in the flood of my tears, like a few drops sinking into the great river Jayhun. Without you my body is yellow and thin like a crescent moon; whoever saw it said, it is about to set and vanish. When the coils of your hair fall over one another, swarming thoughts rise from my mind. Your dark curls, like heart-stealing Turkish raiders, have girded themselves to plunder the captive heart. For a single night your dark locks kept no guard over my heart, even though such dark ones are always meant to be sentinels. Like the darling of the eye, I set upon my eyes every dark one that bears a sign of your name. It is the custom of Hindus to make their place in fire, and so your locks have made their place in my heart and soul, that fire. Your locks steal the heart from the very center of the eye; no wonder, for nimble thievery is second nature to such dark ones. With the raiding assault of your dark tresses upon me, my home and belongings are forever like a plundered gypsy camp. Fortune is your dark slave and prosperity your servant, as long as the lord of the world keeps his gaze upon you. The foremost of the age, the just minister, order of the faith, whose signet ring the ring of the heavens has kissed. O leader whose like the ages have never seen, beside your judgment the sun has no work left to do for the world. In rank, splendor, and dignity you surpass the sun; as for generosity and grace, do not even count them, they are beyond measure. As long as the cloud of your generosity rains upon the world, no one's skirt is soiled with the dust of poverty. Whether or not anyone like you ever existed in the past, I know for certain there is none in this present age. In your era, loyalty has fastened its belt firmly, though the sky itself is not so firm in keeping faith. Whoever, like the sun, is parted from your shade finds no resting place on earth, not even for an instant. If your envier prospered for a day or two, that is a rare fluke, not to be reckoned worthy of note. So lavish is your giving in its overflow that even the beggar grows weary of your gifts. Your kindness works upon the temper of the soul the way the dawn breeze works upon a budding flower. Besides granting the heart its every wish, what other task does your generosity have in this world? Your envier heaps dust on his own head from the cruelty of fate every day the sun lifts its head out of the earth. From the tip of your pen there has dripped upon the earth that essence which turns plain dust into sugarcane. Good fortune's true home is your threshold; it must have your generosity to travel anywhere else. One who makes his cheeks wet with the tears of your enemy is not counted as a man of honor at all. Whoever opens his tongue to praise you deserves to crown his head with that tongue, like a candle's flame. Though the sea and the mine give ceaselessly, how could they ever match that giving hand of yours? O master of the age and minister of the times, may your enemy be forever crushed by the times. The moth of your mind first attains its light, then the candle of the sun grants its light to the world. The soul has girded itself for your service, yet what is such a thing worth against what the times can grant? The heavens have written among your special titles: blessed by creation, renowned throughout the age. Upon the crown of the bride of your endurance, the perfumer of the sky scatters the amber and camphor of the age. May the glow of your love shine forever in the soul of the sun; the hand of your life has written the decree of the age. The hand of death shortens its reach from the hem of lives if the heavens make you the minister of the age through your grace. This custom of generosity we have seen in your heart and hand, truly, is all we ever heard of Hatim of Tayy. O you whose shadow is more auspicious than the phoenix's shade, kings set foot upon your carpet with reverence. It was an honor and a fitting favor in its own place that the king troubled himself to come to this lofty house. It became clear that the king's intent is turned toward goodness, since he resolved to grace this dwelling with his coming. The Gemini is the highest station among the king of the stars, because it is the house of the noble-minded minister. Suited to your case I have heard a verse, from the words of Emadi, most graceful and heart-opening. It bears a royal seal, or else I would have said: a holy book is not made greater by a golden clasp. When kings are guests at the table of your bounty, my treasure comes only as the tag-along beggar's crumbs. No one in the world has spoken or will speak such words as these, and if they have, then do not honor me for mine. May fortune stand beside the presence of the age's foremost lord; may good luck take up residence at this threshold. Every eye-piercing arrow that flies from the bow of the heavens, may it take the arch of your enemy's brow as its target. The bird that laid the golden egg of the sun, may it build its nest on a corner of your palace. From the court of the unseen to the threshold of your majesty, may reinforcements of triumph and victory be dispatched. The pillars of the realm have surrendered eye and ear to your command; at a single sign from you, may they leap to the whip's tip. As long as the two Guard-Stars circle around the pole, may those twin stars keep circling around you, the one and only. And whoever refused to place your worth above the heavens, may his fate be as low as a servant's, cast down from the middle. May the world grant you all your desires; may your hand, your heart, and your door open wide in joy.

Where is the outcry, the uproar, the wailing? Why are you silent? The master lies in this state, and you keep your wits about you? Purity was cast out and safety fled like comfort; well-being packed up and left, and still you are silent. If you truly knew what disaster has struck, even so alive, you would surely boil over within yourselves. To see what this calamity has written upon our heads, mourn while there is time and strive to weep. Our dark days may yet turn bright as day, if in this grief you dress in coarse black like the night. It is a false reckoning if you imagine that after the master you will ever taste one cup of joy. Neither I am ashamed before myself, nor you before me, when you hear from me the elegy for the world's chancellor. Wail and wail, for hearts are not full enough of pain; weep and weep, for this catastrophe deserves it. Shall I speak first of his rank and his noble lineage, or of his learning, piety, abstinence, and worship? Shall I count his manliness, humanity, excellence, and virtues, or speak of the school, the lectures, and the wisdom he gave? Shall I first describe the good name he kept all his life, or speak of this very end and his martyrdom? It is a day of mourning, so people, laugh at me: that at such a wake I recite verse out of habit. God knows I would not have done justice to a single quality of his, even if I spoke of it for a hundred years. You who are his enemy, by God, come and speak yourself, so no one says I praised him merely from boldness. Since he became the key to eternal paradise, what wonder if I call this arrow of death an omen of good fortune? All this bloody weeping upon my cheeks is the trace of the bloody grin of a single arrow's notch. How strange that people are weary of themselves and of life; what strange year is this, come round again, so strange a year? They laid the chancellor of the world level with the dust, yet no stones rain from the sky; how strange the state of things. If patience finds the field of the heart too narrow, at least there is strange room for tears upon my face. The grave swallowed the lion, a mighty prey; the dust drank down the sea; how strange a punishment. From now on it is grief for me, and for everyone like me; how could we know that a cheerful heart after this is a strange impossibility? If anyone imagines that by some kind of talent he can be happy after this, what a strange delusion that is. A sun who held the Quran with him, and then from that Quran came an eclipse and a decline; how strange. See what bravery they showed when they set a notch to a bowstring: how such faintheartedness dared to do this. The people of the city all gathered at his gate, sitting at the wake, and the day grew very late. The chancery lay without splendor, all hearts in dread, as if none dared wake the master from his sleep. No, he rises early at dawn; this long sleep is not his way; I do not know what has happened, alas. This long sleep is not to his taste, for he used to shorten our long living nights with wakefulness. What wound is this that came from armies and hordes, when neither the world, nor wealth, nor followers, nor troops availed? All this pomp and order of our master, was it only this? To this it came: we belong to God. The master's dignity, throne, and grandeur are all gone; the house is left in darkness and its doors are black. They should not decree such a moving of house; after a lifetime one should return home better than this. Chancellor of Islam, where are you, where is your face? In this calamity you are like a reed; where is your comforter? Enemy and friend watch you from every side; where is your force that crushed the foe, your gentleness that harmed no one? What befell you, that you left your place so soon? Where is all that heavy, weighty patience of yours? Where is the awe of even a shadow from the corner of your turban, that could quiet all this tumult of the city? Sedition woke from your long slumber; oh, alas, where is that wakeful fortune of yours? You whose face, like a tulip, is stained with the blood of the heart, where is all that glow and freshness of your rosy cheeks? Where, moment by moment, is that sweet, sugar-scattering word you spoke to me under your breath in kindness and grace? What are stone and anvil beside our heedless hearts? You beneath the earth, and we passing above it. Who in the world now has the habit of mounting the pulpit? Whose mind is fit for learning, whose heart for the record? Since the crown of the pulpit fell to the dust in this mourning, it befits dust alone now to sit atop the pulpit. Let the seat of the law wear black, for that is fitting; let the pen of legal rulings weep blood, and it is proper. Who now will hold back tyrants from the weak below? Who will help the helpless after today? From whom shall pilgrims and petitioners now beg, when this door was the appointed place of their daily bread? For two or three days the orphan and the widow have wandered lost; alas, I fear it will grow even worse than this. You left the world with a clean skirt, and until the skirt of Judgment Day the mountain's skirt will stay wet with our heart's blood. Who has the courage or the strength to bring to their lips that such a master left the world in such a way? The master should have heard his own praise from me, not that I recite his elegy while the enemy listens. There should be another whose harvest is burned like mine, to hear the state of my own burned harvest. Whoever pulls the cotton of heedlessness from the ear of reason, oh how many a lesson he hears without needing it spoken. You who left none like yourself in the world, and this is confirmed whether man or woman hears it, After this event, bird and fish, in longing for you, wherever they lend an ear, hear wailing and lament. In this soul-burning mourning of yours, where is a listener to hear the sound of weeping from wall and door? Now I lament aloud; tell them to gather round me, whoever wishes to hear the grief and pain of my heart. Has anyone ever heard so terrible a decree of fate? A world of learning and talent, and an arrow the end of it all. You who sleep in the earth of the grave, farewell from us; though you were greatly angered, farewell from us. You who, by the sudden broom of affliction, have swept the joy from our hearts, farewell from us. You precious, priceless pearl of virtue, pierced by the diamond of cruelty, farewell from us. You fresh flower who in paradise, from the thorn of the arrowhead, blossomed before your season, farewell from us. Though you are in the right for the wrong you saw from us, that you hid your beautiful face, farewell from us. I know that in the moment when you had no care to speak, secretly to everyone you said farewell from us. Alas, our meeting is postponed to the Day of Judgment; sweet sleep to you, and while you sleep, farewell from us. He set out on a journey, and piety is his provision for the road; may the survival of his two beloved sons endure forever. Especially this chancellor, who is the aim of the whole world, in truth is a successor like Solomon to David. Whoever has a successor like Nizam al-Islam, in both worlds his end is wholly praised. He whose only hope is a life a hundred times as long: whatever was the essence of the father exists in him. When you look at his greatness and his features, you may say he is both Sa'id and Mas'ud. The branch broke, but may your fruit remain; the flower withered, but its fragrance is the goal. First and last of them, each finer than the other; the tree of the Sa'idids is like fragrant aloewood. Until this rosebush of fortune bears fruit, everyone's trust is in the generosity of the Worshiped One. The rampart of Islam is broken, and we are unaware; the pillar of the faith has left its place empty, and we only look on. Master, chancellor, what suddenly befell you, that both this servant and the free wearied you? Was the world too narrow for you, so you pitched your tent in paradise, or did the heavens, in their folly, give you to the wind? You were a free cypress in the garden of the Prophet's law; may the hand wither that uprooted you unjustly. You whom the wounded of heart remember so much, high and low, woman and man, remember you with heart and soul. Through you much joy reached the hearts of people; I know God, in His mercy, will make you glad. You did much good, and I am certain that all that goodness comes to your aid today. In this moment, whatever thing you need, may all of it be granted you from God Most High. O God, in this perishing courtyard of time, grant the chancellor of the faith to the other great ones.

Do not set your heart on the ways of the world; do not take on suffering by your own choice. The flower you long for will not bloom from this thorn; do not make yourself a thorn for nothing. Your ego is your enemy; on your road, do not keep its desires close beside you. What is its shape? Like a long snake. Do not put your hand into the mouth of that snake. In a place where the flood of annihilation rises, build nothing but sturdy foundations. This base world is only a passage of disaster; do not set your heart on it, hoping for peace. The heart's jewel is a precious gem; do not throw it away on the road and its passersby. Happiness never passes through this place; do not keep your eyes fixed on the road, waiting. Time itself declares its own nature: our deeds are only a pretext it looks for. There is no room for concealment in your heart; so there is no self satisfied soul like you. Since weeping leaves no mark on your heart, the tears you shed outside are nothing but mockery. If the world turned to fire and flood, you would stay unbothered, since nothing harms you. There is not a hand's breadth of sky that is not pierced by the sigh of some wretched soul. No swift steed running faster than the wind of breath can escape the roads of death. Lessen your greed, for nothing blindfolds reason and knowledge worse than greed. For the neck of life, death has no better noose than the days and nights. How can anyone accept our counsel who takes no lesson from this death? No straw is left on the moon's threshing floor; it scattered all upon the head of the world. Open the eyes of awakening; unlock the lock upon the door of grief. Sometimes close, sometimes open your eyes and lips, letting out the secret of loud weeping. The master's procession has arrived along the road; form your ranks and clear the way. And if today he grants an audience, draw back the curtain from the court. With the fingertip of idleness, undo that black banner from his lance. First shut the door of the house, then open the door of the hospice. He will never mount again; loosen the saddle girth at last. Since he will not pass through this door again, close it or open it as you please. My heart is full of fire at your going; your coming was worse than your leaving. One should not mourn only a little; there is nothing else left to do. In such a grief, the source of tears should be no less than the blood of the heart. The dust of his grave, dry as our lips, should be moistened with nothing but blood. After what the world does to us like this, one should not even look its way. From now on, one must place no trust in youth or fortune. With such a creditor chasing after us, one should not step out of the house. Since one must sleep beneath the earth, one should not roof the house with gold. He set out on his journey, and left this saying: one should not travel in the month of Safar. The years of your life are like the stations of the moon: short when measured against its feet. Wherever we look, left or right, there is dread, darkness, hardship, and disaster. The air has darkened with the smoke of my heart, or else the eye of my reason has gone blind. The whole troop and retinue have returned, but the one who led them cannot be found. Perhaps he took another road, unaware that our master is waiting. Ask again of the trusted servants whether the master is ahead of you or behind. Is he too weak, or fast asleep? Why has his foot slipped from the stirrup? The one we came out to welcome was only the master's body; where is the master himself? The way things look to me now, this is a moment for cries of grief and lament. Let us stretch out a daring hand and open the lid of the master's coffin. To see what color his face has now, or what color the rubies of his court have become. To see whether the parrots of his eloquence, caged now, eat sugar or gnaw at the liver in grief. To see where his narrow pistachio mouth has carried its sweet laughter by the load. Or whether they have sifted the dust of misfortune over his two cheeks through the sieve of death. Alas, from the dust of the road and the pain of travel, his face is no longer as bright as itself. The pearls of his teeth no longer glisten; his ailing eye is no longer whole. The fierce wind of death has disheveled his musky locks and the folds of his turban. Fire rose swiftly from his soul; quickly his wind and his market settled and were gone. You are far from us, though you are near, like fire hidden within the darkness. You saw all his fortune and his youth, and all his kindness and his sweet speech. My heart turns to madness whenever it reflects on his meanings and depth. His name stands higher than the sky; his trace has gone beneath the ground. I offered my sweet life as his merchandise; the heart's pain was the gift he brought. The angel of death is truly stone hearted, to have shown no mercy for his youth. Perhaps he meant it so, lest his own gentleness undo his task of taking souls. My heart held its life upon its lips like the dawn, waiting to give him the good news. Whatever was taken from his life added, all of it, to the life of the Pillar of Faith. Do you not see that the shortness of the night is the very cause of the length of the day? This is the outcome of time's turning; this is where everything ends. How long shall we run about in vain, left and right, when this is the end of the road? How long these varied, mistaken reckonings, when the final sum of every count is this? You who are drunk and proud on the cup of life, this hangover is the wine of your days. Do not grieve over any task, for it burdens the heart, since this is where all work and toil end. You who spend all your days in grief and pain, pain is the gift, and this is what time is. A heap of dust lies before us; this is all that remains of such a great master. Though this is a bitter, difficult event, what can be done? This is the decree of the Creator. The soil of Ray was a stranger's enemy; otherwise, why was it ever his time to go? Grievous is the place of Ismail; where now is the splendor and presence of Ismail? Alas, the heart cheering face of Ismail is now boarded in by annihilation. The Feast of Sacrifice has always been a torment for the soul of Ismail. If it were accepted, we would all give our lives for the survival of Ismail. You from whose hand the grace of generosity gushed, like Zamzam springing from Ismail's feet. From that world you came to kiss the hand; be glad, O faithfulness of Ismail. If until now the melody was yours, now you yourself are the song of Ismail. I come to prayer, and in this season prayer is answered, Ismail. May the souls of Masud, Saed, and Mahmud live forever in the house of existence. May your life exceed even your wishes; may generosity be your nature and goodness your habit. When you deliver the teaching of the sacred law, may the office of Jupiter be given back to you. If the sharp headed arrow is not your praiser, may the hand of adversity wear it away. May the Universal Intellect, like me, be struck with wonder before this presence and profit from it. Though this kingdom does not belong to any human, may all of it be yours, whatever you desire. May your generosity take his hand on the Day of Gathering; may his lot be the sorrow of exile and martyrdom. Whatever regard you show to the people of virtue and learning, may your regard toward me be even greater. Before they suddenly tell you, 'may so and so have happiness.' O Creator of the world, by your power, drown that young man in your mercy.

Rise, let us send a howl up to the highest star, let us pull a painful cry from the burning of our souls. Let us weep hot tears like a candle, and, like the dawn, breathe out cold sighs from our chests. Let us set these hot, running tears loose upon the world, and drive this cold sigh all the way up to the moon. No less than a wild duck, let us tune ourselves like a harp; any string that will not wail, let us tear from our bodies. Let us snap the crystal necklace from the sky, and strip the gold brocade robe from the sun. Let us give a scrap of the earth's hide to the wind, so it may fashion a veil and draw it over the sun's face. To take aim at the heavens, let us gather stones in our skirts; how long, like a mountain, will we vainly wear a sword and belt? If a star should glance down with a coquettish look, let us stab its eye with the burning arrow of our grief. If the dawn opens its mouth to laugh after this, let us cut its throat with a blade sharp as the sun. Let us melt our bodies thin as thread from suffering, then string that thread with the pearls of our own tears. Let us raise an uproar at the prison door of the body, so we may lift the Joseph of the heart up out of it. Each day the world's loyalty is worth less, however much more of its cruelty we endure. The storm of sorrow has come and swallowed the world; perhaps we should move our belongings somewhere else. The cure is gone from our hands, so why eat our hearts' blood? We have seen how things end, so why take on the pain? Rise, let us go to the grave of the lord of the world, and line these wet eyes with his dust in place of kohl. Let us make a doomsday of grief and draw help from sorrow, and take revenge on fate for cutting his life short. The days themselves are ashamed before our heart's pain; there is no need to explain what state we are in. As long as the eye has existed, it has seen no harder blow; no one who heard this news of the heart was found unshaken. You saw this too, and it left no mark on you; you shameless eye, no one has seen another as brazen as you. Do not hope for gladness from the bowl of the heavens; whoever tasted a morsel from its table left with an aching heart. Who ever got their heart's desire from the world's sweetness, whose life was not pierced by the arrows of disaster, sweet as sugarcane yet cruel? What harder disaster could there be? For a whole week now our eyes have not caught a single glimpse of the master. Death, which was stealing his life, must have given him its heart; surely it never truly saw the grace of his face. He saw and got everything he wished for the means of success, except long life, which is more needful than all. Thought never reached the depths of his sea of meaning; no keen eye ever grasped the fullness of his beauty. He sowed many seeds of learning and virtue, but the flood of oblivion came and he reaped nothing from that crop. It is a loss to see, bound in the torture-rack of the coffin, a cypress whose grace no fresh boxwood could match. It is a shame that the fists of the tomb's bricks strike a flower that had never felt a blow but the dawn breeze. With lofty aspiration he set his mind on paradise, since he found the affairs of this world too paltry. The thousand-eyed heavens sifted through his dust; as far as it searched, it found only virtue and skill. In rank he attained what no human ever attained, and in fortune he saw what no mortal ever saw. What sorrow, what regret, that just as his affairs succeeded, when he opened his eyes he saw no trace of any of it left. Though he had bowed his neck to no one's command, he could not escape submitting to the command of Him. Alas, that when he truly saw how things stood, the spiteful heavens threw his back to the ground. Did you see what the master did, leaving so suddenly? He set the people on fire and left the household behind. A whole city clutched his sleeve, begging for one more night; the pleading did not hold him, and he went, trailing his skirt away. The guest was seated, the house adorned, what happened? For all at once he left, with his body grown so weak. He was riding the silver steed of the heavens; it turned rebellious, and the reins slipped from his hand. In truth the whole world was but a word for him; look at this heartbreak, that the world has gone out of the world. Now what use is the narrow cage of this age, when that sweet-spoken, sugar-tongued parrot has flown away? The wind of eloquence has settled into the dust of his resting place, and from the fire of parting the running water has fled. When the dawn breeze learned of his illness, its strength left its hands and feet and its calm left its soul. The mouth of the inkwell went dry and bitter with grief for him; from longing, the marrow left the bone of the pen. If the pen of legal rulings wept blood, it wept rightly, for those words, that script, that eloquence had left its hand. His seat was emptied of him, from the very platform from which the lord of the world departed. The heavens bit their hand in grief again and again, but what use was it, once the arrow had left the bow? For three or four days everyone mourned him; then that burning cooled a little, and those griefs faded. Free man and servant went back to their work and business; poor Sadr al-Din, who was torn away by fate's cruelty. May the thicket of fortune never be empty of the lion's cub, now that the strength has left the raging lion's paw. It is clear that it yields its place to the falling star, now that the sun has left the crest of this dusty world. If he was great, his successor is no small man; the light of the meteor and the shade of Umar's line are one. From this frail-footed life, fickle as the world's promise, and these harsh events, cruel as the world's prison, I reflect: surely no one can snatch the ball of their desire from the curve of time's polo-stick. Expect no single-hearted loyalty from the nature of the age, since there is nothing but two-facedness in the ways of the world. When the hand of ruin seized the hem of the end of time, the world tore open its own collar at its feet. I have seen many disloyal ones in my day, but I never saw one as faithless as the world. Do not fall into the sack of the world's flattery, for the world's bag holds many such tricks. Search the world from edge to edge and see whose heart was not chewed up in the teeth of the age. You saw how the hand of the heavens brought down even the man who was a true man on the field of the world. Though my liver turns to blood with heart's pain at the death of this stranger of the age, we are content, for at last he is stout-hearted, this Shafi'i of the age, this Nu'man of our time. You, whose being is the essence of these two great houses, who today are the cream of the pillars of the age, may you endure, for I am certain that after this the mine of the age will yield no gem like you. May these two houses never be empty of your shade, for today your grandeur is the guardian of the age. You are the true meaning of the age; all but you is idle filler on the ledger of the world's forgetting. Guard yourself against the harm of the evil eye; take care, master, your life is the life of the age. You are in the shelter of well-being, and in your shelter are these masters of the era and the great ones of the age.

Death spares no human being; the king of death shows no mercy to anyone. The decree of death falls upon all the world; it does not single out only you and me. The looting hand of misfortune ransacks the house of existence, for these times demand nothing less. There is not a single instant when this upside down bowl of fate does not conjure a thousand tricks from itself. Sudden fortunes come, and ruin trails right behind them; deeply heedless is the one who does not watch the show. What choice have we but to submit, when fate never consults us before shaping our destiny? Every moment they bring before us, from behind the veil of destiny, a new turmoil that never resembles the last. A storm of chaos has broken from this troublemaking cloud; Lord, what disasters now stand revealed. In the very pride of fortune, suddenly from some corner the hand of time turns everyone's affairs upside down. Nothing but treachery is the rule of this age and its people; they have all taken on the color of the times. They cut off the very head they swore loyalty to, and slay the very one they had promised protection. No shame before people, no fear of God; no awe for religious law, no dignity for knowledge. When they address or scold one another, no tongue speaks but the tongue of the blade. And if from afar they send messages to each other, their messages are nothing but sharpened arrows. When the age placed its command in the hand of chaos, Gog and Magog breached the great wall of Alexander. Whoever grasps the true measure of his own pain and affliction is present in body yet no longer himself. Whatever heart's desire the wheel of fortune grants a person, the wise call it nothing but blood money for his own death. In such a state, the wise, if he had the means, would walk into the alley of nonexistence on his own feet. They abandoned the religion of God, and each person invented a religion after his own liking, to serve himself. Made hungry by greed, they thirst for one another's blood, like someone who has grown weary of his own survival. It is hard to trust anyone, when this is how one deals even with one's own leader. Whoever walks the path of treachery like the age itself will also receive from the age his just reward. Alas, the cause of learning and virtue has fallen into ruin; the sun of faith has plunged from heaven's peak into the dust. Friends and loved ones all sit in grief; the heartbroken wait for the promise of a healing balm. A handful, black cloaked like stars in the dark night, sit awaiting the greatest luminary. The world of generosity and kindness has vanished from our midst, and now the whole world sits mourning him. In the narrow house of hearts, at his funeral, sorrow and pain and misery sit together. The world conquering dawn held its breath, and in grief for him, wherever you look, two or three companions sit. The ship of hope is stranded on dry land, and the people of learning sit in the dust, weeping like dew. You would ask: where have virtue, knowledge, and meaning gone? Generosity and grace are no more; they sit in mourning. Every breath the dawn draws, it draws from the depth of its pain; that is why it breathes such cold, heavy sighs. When the chessboard of events fell into a bloody hand, see how the game collapsed under a crippled hand. The light of the eye hid itself behind the veil of destiny, and fell, uncared for, into the grip of a base opponent. The hand of death grew strong and played a strange move; in striking the king, a checkmate escaped from it. What pain, what regret, that at the hand of death's army the banner of knowledge fell low, like the hand of generosity. The scarlet tulip withered in the wind of death, and fell from the throne of fortune into dust and blood. The foundation of learning was ruined all at once; how can the roof stand firm once the pillar has fallen? Planning is helpless against the workings of destiny; it was a great matter, yet now it has come to pass. The flood of death ruined the city of meanings; the tyranny of the wheel turned the sea of meanings into a mirage. The bond of gladness with this age has been severed; the veil of honor over life and wealth has been torn. A state that in the mind is like the Day of Resurrection: the eye took no lesson from it, and that too was seen. By night it sleeps, by day the eye looks about without his face; so tears have every right to turn to blood. The bare headed pen went wailing and turned like a cloud; the pulpit bent its frame, moaning like the grieving pillar. Alas that beneath the stone of the wheel's cruelty there stayed a hand that had been made for giving. What pain, that the hands of fools debased the one who had been raised in the bosom of generosity. We beat our heads with the foam of sorrow, like the sea, for a ruby of Badakhshan has dripped away from the mine of generosity. If a human is filled by earth in a single breath, then why is the earth never filled by humans? May the fresh new shoot of the tree of religious law endure, and may the light of its beauty drive sorrow from our hearts. He is the royal falcon of the faith, and now he has opened his eyes; may his blessed glory be a shade like the wing of the phoenix. Upon the branch of the pulpit sits a sweet voiced parrot; may our souls be sacrificed for that sugar showing parrot. In the narrow terror of this harsh calamity, may his words be a comfort to the burdened hearts. For those wounded by the blow of the age's cruelty, may the sight of the master be a balm and a bringer of ease. May patience and mercy that clip the wings of grief descend upon those who dwell behind the veil of honor. May God, until the trumpet of resurrection sounds, be the guardian and helper of small and great, present and absent. May Masoud be fortunate upon the tree of bliss in that other world, and may the end of everyone's affairs be praiseworthy.