English
Elegy for Sadr al-Din Umar al-Khojandi
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.