English
An Ode
I moan like a harp, and, alas, you call it a song; I weep like a candle, and, alas, you take it for laughter.
What will you do with my heart, which you bought out of whim, when you already own so many hearts for free?
You are eager for this trade, and I know it well: your trade is digging into hearts and wounding them.
You are faithless, yet so full of coyness and grace; a thousand pities that you keep no faith.
Suppose you have seized my heart against my will, how will you guard it in the grip of burning fire?
May I die for the way you look; though I stand before your eyes a hundred times, you act as if you never saw me.
Do not let any other wrong me the way you do; I purchase you at the price of love and loyalty.
Now you take the trouble to ask after me, when the pain of parting from you is killing me with all this grief.
What joy have I in this glassy workshop of the world? What ease in this rust-green garden?
Without you, the wine in my cup turns to poison; without you, the rose in my bed turns to thorns.
Shall I cure love for you with patience? What a thing to say; fine silk cannot hold back a flame.
Do not think me, who only boasts of patience out of whim, a worthy rival for the grief of your love.
Thorns and brush cannot rein in a flood; a reed-bed cannot shield against lightning.
What became at last of the bride of your beauty, that I see you ready to bow your head to my rival?
You with your neglect, strolling the garden with your friends; I with my endurance, in a corner of sorrow, friendless.
For God's sake, do not unveil in the garden, lest it sow a quarrel between the rose and the nightingale.
A cry against my dark days and nights; no day was ever that black, no night ever that dim.
From the mischief of these quicksilver stars, from the malice and cruelty of this rust-green sky.
May no one's heart be pained, and pained like this; may no one's body be worn out, and grieving like this.
Now I will carry my complaint to the court of the king, for fate has no intention of helping me.
The king on the throne of sainthood, Ali, the friend of God, by whom the face of joy is forever rose-red.
How fine: your conduct is the ornament of the law's scripture; how fine: your banner is the capital of world-rule.
If your majesty calls for silence, the seed of rue holds itself still in the burning fire.
When the cloud of your generosity scatters pearls, it sometimes makes the rains seem few against its abundance.
The constancy of your covenant is a garden where, from all its petals, no flower has grown but the rose of faithfulness.
Where the scent of your character opens like musk, the morning breeze no longer sets up a perfumer's shop.
You have the power for every task except oppression; you have the means for every work except tyranny.
Your commands are all effective like divine decree; your prohibitions all hold like destiny.
Your effective command seeks no aid from the angels; your enforced ruling seeks no help from heaven.
The nightingale of the garden has opened its tongue to praise you; the partridge of the hills stands at your command.
If, with a pen of gold, they inscribe the record of your justice on the page of this rust-green sky,
it would so affect the oppressive nature of the heavens that to the end of time it would never incline to tyranny again.
Should the vigilance of your prudence light up its cheek to protect, out of compassion, the hearts of lovers,
then how could the heart-stealers dig into hearts with their lashes? How could the idols wound hearts with their coyness?
Whether mighty kings set it upon their crowns, or beautiful idols of Farkhar wear it in their eyes,
the shoe of your steed holds that lofty a place; the dust of your procession holds that exalted a rank.
Even if the bird of thought beats its wings a thousand years in flight, bound for the height of your domain,
the Huma still cannot reach the roof of your glory, even if you bring it down a thousand steps in rank.
What generosity, that at its height the ocean-hearted cloud draws shame from your pearl-scattering hand.
Ever since your being became the ornament of existence, the sky rose up and spun in jubilation.
Your glory grew so great that the heavens nearly stayed still and ceased their turning.
Proof enough of your virtue: at the battle of Khaybar the Prophet gave you the title 'the Attacker.'
It is fitting that blood should run from the envier's eye, since the rank of standard-bearer became yours alone.
When the pen of fate wrote the decree of martyrdom upon you, from that day the heavens put on robes of color.
How could it live forever, when death itself disowns your enemy in disgrace?
O king, on the day of battle, even if all your foes join together for the sake of victory and triumph,
and the earth turns crimson from the blood of the slain, and the air turns dark and rust-green with dust,
still the fair bride of victory enters your chamber; still you take the bride of triumph in your arms.
It is fitting that the heavens should seek to buy the crescent-shaped horseshoe of your steed as an earring for the divine throne.
Blessed be God for this swift gray courser, from whom lightning has learned its fierce speed.
So fast in its running, like a frightened gazelle struggling in the coils of a noose after being captured.
Leaping like the breeze, the breeze of spring; moving like the cloud, the rain-bearing cloud.
When in its display it races abreast of the sky's gray steed, that steed has no escape but from your noose.
It rushes to flight like a swift gale; it pours downhill like a mountain flood.
At rest, it is as calm as a mountain; in motion, it is as smooth as a flowing sea.
I write your praise, O king, yet I know that I am not worthy of describing you.
In a boundless ocean that has no shore, no swimmer is saved by reason or alertness.
By that God to whom thought finds no path, to the depth of whose knowledge even full wakefulness cannot reach;
by His wrath, that when it casts its shadow on a mountain, turns the dark, rose-red ruby into a phantom's color;
by His grace, that if He looks upon hell, turns the dwelling of sinners into a rose garden;
by that Bountiful One who spread the table of generosity from being, and feeds the wanderers of nothingness;
by Ahmad, that king of both worlds, whose rank in glory has surpassed all you can imagine;
by the rank and station of Abu Dharr and Salman, by the dignity and degree of Jabir and Ammar;
by the chastity of the king of Canaan (Joseph), who in the sanctuary of union turned away from Zulaikha's seduction;
by the restlessness of love and that coy beauty, with which Zulaikha set her heart on tormenting Joseph;
by the simple-heartedness of an old woman whose love grew moment by moment with a longing to buy him;
by a coquetry that was neither hidden nor plain, by a state that was neither drunkenness nor sobriety;
by the dawn of union that strips patience from the heart, by the scent of parting that keeps the eye awake;
by a moan that opens a spring of blood from rock, by a weeping that makes blood flow from the eye;
by the famine of generosity, by the elixir of faithfulness, I swear by the humbling of honor and the honoring of the humble:
that you may pour me, from the cup of your sainthood, that wine which the heavens could scarcely hold in a single goblet.
I would not trade the title of being your servant for kingship, even if the sermon of world-rule were given to me.
If I look with desire at the table of this world, may the pleasure of life be forbidden to me.
Behold, your words are like the speech of the truthful informer; behold, your discourse is like revelation sent down by the Creator.
A hundred thousand cries at the cold-heartedness of the age, for fine speech finds no warm market here.
Art has no currency, and like unsold goods, no one buys excellence.
What use is it that my pen scatters pearls? What good that my nature rains down jewels,
when to these critics there is no difference at all between idle babble and graceful speech?
Let me keep to praising God, for there is a great distinction between me and these reluctant companions.
I praise myself from noble lineage; I am of the line of the Chosen One (Ali), and this is my worthy claim.
Two servants attend me: intellect and wisdom; two attendants serve me: cleverness and alertness.
The tonic I compound for the wounded drives the breath of sickness out of their constitution.
Do not do this injustice to your own good sense, and shame on you; do not by mistake count me again among this crowd.
Among the harsh croaking of this garden's crows, it would be fitting if I laughed out loud like a mountain partridge.
Where is the vista of the divine throne, and where the window of a prison? Where is the zone of the heavens, and where a compass-drawn line?
Where is the glow of a mote and where the radiance of the sun? Where the breeze of Egypt and where the scent of a flowerbed?
Where is the crow and where the birds of paradise? Where is the wind and where the gazelles of Tartary?
O king, though in my youth, drunk with heedlessness, my life has passed in wrongdoing,
when you sit in judgment over the worth of my servitude, may my veil not be torn open to expose my deeds.
Grant me refuge in your shadow on that field where from my lips rises a cry of 'mercy, mercy.'
As long as the rose laughs in springtime, as long as the cloud weeps its grief,
may your friend's work be nothing but laughter; may your enemy's lot be nothing but disgrace.