English
In His Praise
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.