English
Ode in Praise of Ala al-Din Ata-Malik Juvayni, the Sahib Divan
What garden ever matched the sight of friends?
No one says paradise is like a mere orchard.
The tree of your silver-bodied form must be the Tuba tree of heaven,
for I have never seen a cypress that comes close to it.
The two-faced rose challenged you with its one face;
now its other cheek is pale yellow with shame.
Where is the one who used to point at the crescent moon?
Before your eyebrows, his finger stayed frozen at his lips in wonder.
Whoever sees your face beside the sun
is left uncertain which is your face and which the sun.
Do not be surprised that I love you while I live,
for that love will remain in my bones even beneath the ground.
No wonder my heart may split open like a pomegranate,
for its blood, drop by drop, is like pomegranate seeds.
Do not blame the one drowning in the sea of love,
for anyone caught in the middle flails his hands and feet.
If you hunt my heart with the arrow of a glance, what wonder?
Your eyebrows, when they curve, are just like a bow.
Do not be cruel, for neither the world nor anything in it endures;
only faithfulness and the company of kind friends remain.
Even if you hide your face like a pod of musk,
do not hope your sweet scent will stay concealed.
You could raise the dead if you returned to your vow,
for the presence of a dear friend revives the soul like incense.
The lip I kissed while it was laughing
was like embracing the seal of a rosewater flask.
A curling, sweet line of down that, were I to describe it,
resembles the handwriting of the Sahib Divan of the Ilkhan.
The trusted one of East and West, the glory of the state and faith,
whose lofty station reaches to the sky.
God willed that Islam, under his protection,
should stay safe within a fortress of refuge from the arrow of disaster.
Otherwise, turmoil had sharpened its teeth so keenly
that neither happiness nor a home would have survived in this land.
It is only right that whoever understands should do good,
for good and evil deeds live on as stories among people.
You are the generous man of the age; from the throng of common folk
your gate is like a sweet watering place for a caravan.
In your time, wherever there sits a chief minister,
he waits at your threshold in awe of your rank.
They liken you to Hatim of Tayy, but that is wrong;
who says the blossoming rose is like the humble judas tree?
With my clear judgment I will not accept even the error
of saying your nature and hand are like the sea and the mine.
Where is your grandeur and towering worth, and where imagination?
I am not one to keep my tongue at such a station.
The arts of your excellence have no limit or end
that the speaking soul could ever find the power to express.
You are a Ma'n ibn Za'ida in the perfection of learning and refinement,
leaving a mark in the books until the Day of Judgment.
The world will not last, but may your fortune endure,
for your good name will remain as long as the world remains.
Especially since Sa'di found the chance of nearness to you,
it is true that thought endures through time.
You too, do not withhold from him the utmost of what is possible,
for that fades while this remembrance lives forever.
To the spite of your enemies, live a long life,
for the thief never wants the watchman to stay.