رسم علي لناظري — Abdul Mohsen Al Suri — Saqi

A decree is laid upon my gaze,
as it circles over every trace:
to linger long beside it, even though
the halt exhausts my camels—
for one compelled to mark the traces
with his ceaseless-streaming tears.
O first of sorrows, you have come
following close upon the last.
You made me bear the weight of love,
and bore the weight of all my secrets.
For one of these I thanked you, but I am not
grateful for its sister.
And a slender youth, like a brown
lance of Khatt, spent the night conversing with me,
until, when the aloof one confined
himself to a visitor’s talk,
the skittish one grew tame through it, and the fear
of the recoiling fugitive fell away.
Indeed, ascetic piety may sometimes be
a sinner’s snare.
As for that wine since whose vintage ages
have passed since its covenant with the vintner,
I did not shun it while able to drink,
except from fear of One all-powerful:
a golden wine that enters the house of your cares
when not a single soul is there.
Fasting, as you know, has stayed
my hand, and I will not prove faithless—
I will not keep it company with wine
and so become the worst of neighbors.
Ramadan has cast down his whole weight; so,
O Shawwal, carry him off, and hurry!
What harm would it do you to deal unjustly
with tyrannous Time,
taking after Ali, s-
on of Imara ibn Udhafir?
He has left all eyes staring
at a hand as long as a sleepless man’s night.
It stretched out and poured gifts, and he added
to its length with a rain-laden voice.
Every traveler spends the night secure in
that generosity,
until their hopes in him appear
as laden as a merchant’s freight.
And mares bred amid the dust
through ages gone—
therefore they possess eyes
endowed with insight.
They seem the very trunks of forests
of interlocking lances,
each holding herself high, yet in terror
swooping like a bird,
until the Amirid youth plunges them
into the engulfing tumult of battle.
They heed him; and answering
the clash of lance comes the beat of hoof.
He gives and conceals; of his beneficence
he makes no public show.
However tightly I fold it away, it passes
from me into the hand of one who spreads it abroad.
A secret is never more surely lost
than with a stay-at-home who makes it travel.