رويدك عن تفنيد ذي المقلة العبرى — Al Sari Al Raffa

Ease off reproaching the man with the tearful eye;

and let it suffice you that tears are the utmost we desire.

And do not weep until you have long endured ardent longing;

and of longing's excess, what brings tears is enough for you.

When tears have not left the place they inhabit,

tears flow by night from his eyelids, restless in their course.

Lightning gleaming over the protected pastures denied him sleep;

when it vanished in the night, longing refused to vanish.

May God protect a dear friend from complaints of longing:

I complained of what I suffer, and he redoubled the complaint.

I conceal love's affliction so that I may destroy it,

yet my eye, pouring tears, is an informer on the affliction.

I keep the tears flowing in it, their channel bleeding,

and cut off breaths whose passages bleed.

I recalled when love's arrow did not stray,

and when the arrows of the days fell wide of their mark.

And how many a night revived the souls of lovers,

through embraces, when they had been neither dead nor alive.

And a day that showed us life swaying with pride,

because of the bright brow of the dusky gazelle fawn it held.

We made the cups gleam that day, while the horizon was unadorned,

until the horizon appeared in a robe revealed to view.

Then the drinkers clasped each yearning cup among them,

on which were men of Persia, with Kisra leading them.

In the glass we are greeted and given drink in illusion,

when we ourselves make greeting and drinking real.

And the wine-pourer clothes it in a robe,

but in its drinker's palm it is stripped bare.

And a night of broad reach spread its canopy

over the horizon, till it seemed clad in a bereaved mother's two robes.

Its veil fetters the eyes' glances,

as though the sighted man among the company were blind before it.

I wore it as a cloak until I saw its robe

grow thin with an outspread sheet of dawn, not yet folded.

And a faint path appeared to us, as though it,

as its bends followed one another, were a snake gliding along,

to a lord who gives his wealth in exchange for praise,

so taking what endures and giving what perishes.

And a gleaming sword that guards every fair, noble man:

when he appears alone, it is his closest companion.

And a bow with tethered tips and a yellow back,

its limbs assembled from disparate parts.

Each of her visiting children has fled away;

O what a mother you are—how unloving, how cruel!

When it flies from her, it passes through every coat of mail,

smooth and gleaming, as a comb passes through graying hair.

And if it swerves from a soul, death guides it to that soul;

and no night-traveler before it was seen guided by death.

You rose over it while the slender spears twisted

their points in the throat of every unyielding youth.

And you shone forth while complexions darkened with fear,

and bright sword-edges grew bloody and brown spear-shafts were spent.

You emulated Abd Allah in valor and generosity,

and never once strayed from his exemplary way.

And you raised poetry after its decline

through your generosity, till it stood at Sirius's summit.

How many a praise-poem has smiled after a gift,

as blossoms smiled after thirst-quenching rain.

Praise that made my merit clear to an envier;

in it, the servant's humility before his master became plain.

It roams the earth's broad paths, though it is fettered

by a rhyme: time wears out, but it does not.

And what harm does a necklace of praise I have strung

and set with gems suffer if al-A'sha is not alive for it?