English
In Praise of the Minister Rukn al-Din Sa'id
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.