English
In Praise of Ali, Son of Abu Talib
What can I tell you of my heart, you playful, sweet-faced one, when you have never had to deal with a heart at all?
Suppose I told you how my heart fares; why would you care, and what good would it do?
For those who lounge safely on the shore have no idea of the state of those tossed in the boat.
How could those at ease in their homes know the plight of the stragglers left behind in the desert?
My oppressed heart writes to its tyrant: I am chained by your dark, musky lasso of hair.
Hoping for a little mercy, it sends caravans of tears and the dust of my sighs toward your street.
Since every difficulty becomes easy through you, how long will my own affair stay so hard with you?
I have a heart wounded by the blade of your cruelty, a heart slaughtered by the arrow of your disdain.
A heart bloodied without you and dead to all pleasure, a heart busy with you and oblivious to all else.
When you swore a bond of love to me, who taught you to break the tie?
Weeping for the memory of you, how long must I rush from valley to valley, from stage to stage?
Once I had two hands and feet to act; now one is left to me, the other stuck fast in the mud.
If after this you still choose to wrong me, I will take my case, for the honor of the tribes, to a judge.
To Ali, the guardian, whose praise is the ornament of every gathering, the light of every assembly.
None could be his equal but his own pure self; God forbid that God should have made a peer for him.
The dome of heaven became a crown, since the new moon resembles the horseshoe of his steed.
For the thirsty, his fingers are the channels that feed the rivers of his generous cloud-like palm.
You are that ocean of bounty who, in the moment of giving, scatters so many pearls from a generous hand.
The sky, for all its vastness, is no more to you than one of your beggars; its skirt cannot match your generosity.
You are that warrior who, on the day of battle, wears the sword of vengeance across your waist like a sash.
Charging lions, hunters of fierce heroes, flee from before you, valley to valley.
If Gabriel spread his wings over Solomon, it was only to be a sheltering shade for the eagle's flight.
At your command the fertile winds make the virgin meadow conceive and bloom.
The shining moon descends before your essence; the radiant sun sets before your star.
The kings of every clan circle your street; the chiefs of every tribe lean toward you.
If a little light from your banner reached the earth, it would come between the sun and the moon.
If reason gazed upon your palace of glory, it would see the heavens reduced to lowly things beside it.
Happy is the one who longs for your street; happy is the one who leans toward you.
My king, beside your presence men are mere underlings; my king, beside you a whole crowd is base.
Even if for a few days they wrongly seized the pulpits at the head of the assemblies,
body and soul are never alike; the thorn and the rose are never the same.
Tell the enemy not to boast: the matter of the caliphate needs no witnesses, demands no proofs.
Who but you tore the gate of Khaybar from its place? Who but you gave away his ring to a beggar?
May the blessing of praising you forever add virtue upon virtue to me.
No witness suits me but your praise; nothing occupies me but the thought of you.
My speech will not stir to describe the lowly; my tongue will not turn to praise the base.
Anyone who tries to count your merits, what fine words, and what a fine speaker he becomes.
No wonder if I raise my head to the heavens, when you spread the shade of your mercy over me.
As long as in this great palace the turning star sometimes rises and sometimes sets,
may your lover stand equal to the sky, and your enemy be brought level with the dust.
May there be honey in your lover's cup, and in your enemy's cup nothing but deadly poison.