Another Ghazal

Love has taken hold of my heart and thrown it into turmoil; yet tenderness forbids me to cry out in complaint. In the grip of passion the days grow long, while the arm of my patience stays forever short. You who report of me that I endure with patience, you have lied about me and spoken falsely. Who could ever accept as just the cruelty of one who counts even my obedience as a failing? He would not accept me even as his slave, though among my own people I never cared to be a prince. You who ask about the day they set out to leave: it was nothing but one pitch-dark night. No caravan halted in a waterless valley without my tears gathering there into a pool. How often I shied away from their slender forms in caution, only for the kohl of their eyes to lure me back into folly. Can patience ever quench the fire in my breast while the marks of my beloved still shine with light? Even were the horses to grow into full-figured beauties, and the crescents of the tribe to ripen into full moons. The captives long for their bonds to be loosed, yet I wish only to remain a captive forever. If a friend wrongs you, you seek help from his equal, but for this friend you will find no equal at all. Even my enemies pitied my anguish and my pain; why then does my beloved show only aversion? If you cannot feel my sighs and my yearning, then listen, and you will hear the creaking of my weeping. My companion on the day of union, my drinking friend, be my comforter through the nights that come after. Did you spend the night, O spirit of spring, in a garden? Or did you come as glad tidings from the land of Iraq? How strange that I drink no wine, yet I stay drunk on the intoxication of love. Passion has swept away my reason, turned my recitation into poetry, and made a tavern of my mosque. There is a thirst in my heart that sipping clear water cannot ease, even if I drank whole seas. What is youth, and what is age, but the grey at my temples? Enough that the change of time itself is a warning. You who are close to your friend, in you there is a blessing: take care, I beg you, not to be ungrateful. Crossing the deserts and bearing hardship to please the beloved should never be reckoned too much. Swallowing the bitterness in the cup of blame is sweet, when the beloved is the one who pours it. The majesty of the one I gaze upon would never have shone for me, had I not held my own self as worthless. You for whom Sa'di vanished from the world, be gentle with the one who has become a beggar at your door. Join me, then leave paradise to those who want it; I desire no destination but you. It is the duty of one who awaits a distant hope to be patient with time. Perhaps though my eyes go white with weeping, one day I will regain my sight when I meet you.