Rubaiyat

These eyes of mine keep watch along the road of waiting, and this ear of mine listens for a loved one's words. At whom else should I look, and from whom should I hear, when both of these exist in me only for one purpose?

I am wounded by you; send me some strength to endure. I am sick with sorrow; send me food for my soul. The healer would be content with even a dry note from you. If there is no rose, then send a withered autumn leaf.

Again a hidden flirtatious glance lies in ambush for me; my heart bears a wound from the probing of those eyelashes. How long will you laugh at my weeping? It seems you have never heard that there is such a thing as separation.

You, whose work always goes smoothly, whose calling is to bring lovers to life. This eye that weeps blood without your face, how long must it stay on the road, waiting for you?

If fate tears me away from that one peerless pearl, my whole body will become like a shell, a hollow filled with regret. I fear that the fire your love kindles over my head will slowly burn me down and bring me to my knees, like a candle.

The very day fate cut me off from you, the one who created me already knew it would be so. I carry so much grief from being apart from you that no one has ever seen me with a smiling mouth.

At your gathering, whoever drinks the pure wine, far from you ends up drinking tears of blood instead. Lord, let no stone ever break it: the cup from which a thirsty soul has drunk its water.

Better not chase after me or scramble for my trail; don't even look toward the place where I am. My companions, have mercy on your own lives: don't breathe in the scent of the flower that springs from our dust.

May my heart never know an easy joy, never a happiness without a bitter cry and a soul-burning sigh. If this is the good day my friends enjoy, then God, let the night of my sorrow never turn into such a day.

Wherever there is a dog, it has a doorstep to call its own; wherever there is a bird, it has a nest. Only your threshold has none, you healer grown used to grief; anyone who doubts this is a faithless unbeliever.

Since the cruelty of fate tore me away from you, for not a single moment have I found my heart glad. I long for you as the nightingale longs for the rose garden; I need you as a hungover man needs his morning wine.

Look at the ways and habits of that cruel love: my own failure, and the success of all my rivals. See how my sweetheart greets me only with spite, while she keeps picking fights with her own lover.

You left, and life went with you, what a pity. Age arrived, youth was gone, what a pity. Come back, for life has passed and the day draws near when you'll say of so-and-so, what a pity.

You asked who I am: a recluse, don't ask. Someone grown used to losing a darling, don't ask. Drink to your joy and be happy, for I carry a heart, and a sorrowful heart at that, don't ask.

Anyone who burns down my harvest, who ruins me, must do it with weeping and lament. On the rose that springs up from my dust, I wish a nightingale would make its home.

For a lifetime now, madness has welled up from my heart, and tears the color of red tulips pour from my eyes. In the valley of love, my weeping eye is that spring from which blood forever flows.

You who pass through the memory of my heart: when you go by, nothing but tears can answer the grief you leave behind. Since I was torn from you, what misery is mine; if your memory doesn't come to rescue my heart, it cries out in pain.

I want to compose love's anthem, to build it from the ground up, and remember the days of my captivity. I long so deeply for the snare and the cage that, though I am free, I go searching for the hunter.

What pain, that the idol I love is so quarrelsome, and from a single glance of hers my soul lies wounded. People ask me how my days are going, imagining I have a fine life of it.

For a lifetime my days have been dark; what can I do? I have fallen from the eye of esteem; what can I do? If in this hard moment my hand has reached for my own collar in grief, no wonder: the hem of my beloved's robe has slipped from my grasp; what can I do?

How could I tell someone a story about you, or make an endless complaint about you? I would be ashamed to complain about you to a stranger; if I must complain at all, I will bring it only to you.

If I raised a cup at the party of pleasure without you, I plunged my wet eyes a hundred times into blood. Like the wine jug left standing there, so stays the hand I struck on my own head in grief for you.

They tell me not to be restless, not to weep through the nights of separation. But as long as the fire of his love burns over my head, I cannot stop my crying for a single moment, like a candle.

I take no pleasure in a lover's embrace, nor any longing for flowers or springtime walks. It is enough for me that, sitting in a corner of grief, I have the thought of a friend like you for company.

You asked: where is the body that love wore thin, and where is the soul that never rested in it for a moment? Let me answer you with a word, but don't take offense: where is the beauty you had just two days ago?