ألا غادها مخطئا أو مصيبا — Al Sari Al Raffa — Saqi

Come, visit her at dawn, whether wrong or right,
and go toward her, calling or answering.
And take a flame whose heat comes tomorrow,
when heat one day meets a blaze.
Autumn invited us to a place
surpassing other places in beauty and fragrance.
Beauty had been gathered in a garden,
and the Tigris spread its branches through it.
And a tent whose embroidered mantles
smile back at the fresh brocade of the uplands:
we erect it when we alight in the forenoon,
and dismantle it when we depart at sunset.
As though we had tethered there a skittish one
from among the horses, fearing an imposing figure.
So we spent the night, and the east breeze spent it
rolling sand-heaps along its two sides.
Despite the weakness of its breaths, it nearly
sends those draughts flying over the drinkers.
And our fragrant herbs had hidden the earth,
leaving the eye no share of it.
As though we were on both sides of deep water,
where the north wind meets the south upon it.
There was rapture that unsettled the wits,
and refinement that took hearts captive,
and a cupbearer facing his pitcher
as a gazelle faces a hand-reared gazelle.
He makes his rounds among us with sun-bright wine,
frightening the sun with it until it sets.
And our hunter spreads around us
the choicest catch, pleasing the discerning:
barbels whose bodies declare
that they have grazed in a fertile tract.
So tender that, had they touched
the air, it would have left scars on them.
Were it not for the armor fitted
to their bodies, they would almost have melted.
And a wild creature is sent out onto land,
bringing the wild beasts a grievous day.
Well trained, her deeds win approval;
we have seen no other well-mannered lion.
And a Turk-faced one shows us
eloquent friendship and a foreign face.
When she leaps, she embraces her quarry
as a lover embraces the beloved he meets.
A sure chase and a lovely disposition,
and a graceful leap, and a wondrous feat!
She has won her masters' love,
so each fears Death for her.
The water clamors around us
if it confronts that amorous one.
Mountains, joined together by wisdom,
which bestows them on seas, not plains.
They face us in a shirt of darkness
when the horizon has been stripped of it.
Their chests stand raised forever,
embracing the water's strange delegation.
I marveled at them, pale of cheek:
night travel had not banished their pallor.
Whenever we intended to visit them,
we boarded a child or kinsman to reach them.
The dams sing to us among them
a song to which we tear our collars.
Every traveler alongside them sees himself,
however hard he travels, still near them.
Carefree of heart, yet he
moans, saddening the rapture-loving heart.
How lovely a dwelling the monastery is!
There we plucked life, tender and fresh.
Whenever we bathed there for a while,
its marvels kept us from disappointment.