English
The Tale of the Enmity Between Two Men
Between two men there was hatred and war,
their heads raised in pride against each other like leopards.
So repelled were they by the sight of each other
that the sky itself felt too narrow for both.
Death sent its army against one of them;
his days of pleasure came to an end.
His enemy grew glad in his heart,
and some time later passed by his grave.
He saw the chamber of his grave plastered with earth,
the man whose palace he had once seen gilded with gold.
Strutting, he stepped up to the head of the grave,
lips parted in a smile, saying to himself:
How sweet and complete is the fortune of the one
who, after his enemy's death, lies in a friend's embrace.
There is no need to weep for the death of a man
who lived a while after his enemy was gone.
Out of spite, with the strength of his arm,
he tore a slab from the face of the grave.
He saw the crowned head down in the pit,
both its world-seeing eyes packed with dirt.
His body a prisoner in the dungeon of the grave,
his flesh food for worms, plunder for ants.
So tightly had the earth packed his bones
that they were like an ivory case brimming with kohl.
Through the turning of the wheel, his moon-bright face was a thin crescent;
from the cruelty of time, his cypress stature a bare splinter.
The palm of his hand and his once mighty grip,
the days had torn joint from joint.
Such pity welled up in his heart for him
that with his tears he kneaded mud upon that dust.
He grew sorry for what he had done and for his ugly ways,
and ordered these words carved on the gravestone:
Do not rejoice at anyone's death,
for time will not keep you long after him.
A wise mystic heard these words
and cried out: O all powerful God,
it would be a wonder if you showed him no mercy,
when even his enemy wept bitterly over him.
One day our own body will become like that,
so that the hearts of enemies will burn for us.
Perhaps mercy will stir in my friend's heart
when he sees that even my enemy forgave me.
Sooner or later the head comes to such a state
that you would say an eye was never in it at all.
One day I struck my hoe into a mound of earth,
and a mournful, aching cry reached my ear:
Take care, if you are a man, strike more gently,
for this is an eye, an earlobe, a face, a head.