English
The Parrot and the Crow
They put a parrot in a cage with a crow, and the parrot suffered from the sight of it, saying: What a hideous face, what a loathsome shape, what a cursed look, what a graceless form. Oh, crow of separation, I wish there were the distance of the two horizons between you and me.
Whoever wakes at dawn to your face,
may the morning of his health turn to dusk.
A miserable creature like you would deserve your company,
but where in the world is there anyone as wretched as you?
Strangely enough, the crow too was sick to death of the parrot's nearness, weary of it, muttering prayers against evil and wailing at the turning of the world, wringing its hands in bitter regret: What upside-down luck is this, what a base fortune, what fickle days. What I truly deserved was to stroll along a garden wall with another crow.
For a pious man, this much prison is enough:
to be penned up in the same stall as scoundrels.
Yes, what did I ever do that, as punishment, fate has bound me in this chain of misery, strung together with such a fool, so stubborn, so ill-bred, chattering nonsense?
No one will come near a wall
if they paint your likeness on it.
If you were given a place in paradise,
others would choose hell instead.
I offer this saying so you understand: however much the wise despise the fool, the fool dreads the wise a hundred times more.
An ascetic was among carousing revelers,
and from that crowd a lovely one from Balkh spoke up:
If you are weary of us, do not sit here sour-faced,
for you are the only bitter thing among us.
A gathering joined together like roses and tulips,
and you sprouting up in their midst like a stick of dry firewood.
Unpleasant like a contrary wind, harsh like the cold,
you sit there like snow and freeze like ice.