English
Ghazal 20
What use is the book of wisdom to a reckless heart?
A head full of longing has no patience for sermons.
If your word could ever mix water with fire,
then it might make love and patience live together.
The eye is good for one thing: seeing the beloved.
If it can't do that, what use is sight at all?
Why should lovers care about the blame of friend or foe?
Whoever suffers for love must also suffer disgrace.
Everyone knows the tender down on your cheek is what I love,
not the wild grass of the plains, like some grazing animal.
I surrendered my heart and my patience to plunder
the very day I fell captive to that ravishing beauty.
Forget the cypress and its graceful stature;
tell it to come watch the elegant way you come and go.
Drive it off and it won't leave; if it does, it comes back.
The fly can't stay away from the sweet shop's stall.
No one can add to my words or to your beauty:
this is the limit of eloquence, and of loveliness.
Saadi, tonight the dawn drum never sounded its watch;
or perhaps for a lonely night there is no morning at all.