English
In Praise of Nizam al-Din Muhammad
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.