فه بالمراد عن الغرام وأعرب — Mufti Fathallah

Speak what you mean about passionate love, and make it plain.

Leave allusion, not frankness, and write.

Concealment is not love's nature;

even if you conceal it, it will not stay hidden.

Wasting away is surely a sign of love,

like tears that, when they flow, enlighten the dull-witted.

Who is there whose body has not wasted away,

and whose tears have not been shed from love?

I am a man familiar with yearning and love,

and a lover's condition has not gone unnoticed.

The hands of yearning and heartache have played with him,

while love's hand has played with none but him.

And when I judge passionate longing to be

fire, my judgment is sound and most correct.

I love the slender-waisted one, a tender shoot of a bān tree.

In his softness he is cruel, for he is my tormentor.

A Bedouin fawn with dusky, dark-tinted lips,

accustomed to flight among the oryx and antelope herds.

He loves fleeing and grows familiar with no lover,

and feels the fiercest aversion to union.

I have never ceased loving, nor will I forget my love for him.

Despite the distance, I am not estranged.

Being forsaken did not make me forget him,

even if estrangement came without a cause.

Rather, the one who decreed cruelty required estrangement;

love is not stripped from a lover.

The imagining of union with him courses through my fancy,

so I stretch my hopes as al-Ashʿabi stretches his.

I resemble the man who, in ignorance, makes his palm

a snare, catching birds in a fool's fancy.

A coquettish one, kohl-eyed in enchanting black-and-white contrast;

and magic is kohl upon the eyelids of the long-lashed one.

His eyelids, in their languid droop, have confirmed

the magic of his glances; I beheld what was not expected.

Before the scorpion-curl at his temple, I did not know

that vipers' stings fall short of a scorpion's sting.

His mouth parts to reveal cool, pearly teeth,

and pearls flash in the sweetest saliva.

It is not lightning that snatches minds; rather,

minds are stolen by the flash of his pearly-toothed mouth.

He grasped the cups and poured wine into them,

and sipped it like the sweetest fresh water.

Then I saw a sun within which another sun appeared,

and a crescent encircled it, plainly in sight.

It began to vanish between the two crescents of a smiling mouth,

passing through carnelian twilight toward its setting.

I fancy it has shone forth from his breast,

as though, on shining forth, it had never set.

His cheeks blaze with the water of beauty,

yet fire has never blazed forth from water.

Beauty wrote upon the page of his cheek

a flowing loveliness whose water has never run dry.

The hand of grace and beauty has dusted it

with powdered musk from fragrant cheek-down.

Yet I know, from the customs long observed,

that no written page has been dusted with fine silk.

No sooner did the full moon of his brow appear than

the morning sun sank westward before noon.

So command the stars of night to hide, for in

the sphere of his brow the brightest star gleams.

Rather, tell the sun of the east and the horizon: Hide!

For the sun of the West has appeared in the East.

The consummate master, the learned scholar, whose excellence

defeats expression, leaving it unable to speak of him;

the sage, the ocean, with whose name alone

the scroll of knowledge and reason has been inscribed;

the jewel concealed within the shell of exalted rank,

the pearl of virtues in gilded embroidery;

the discerning, clever poet, possessed of reason,

master of rhymes and most wondrous eloquence;

the eloquent, peerless orator, who rises

in mastery above eloquence's Quss and Yaʿrub.

Never did he stand to speak at a gathering of orators

but, helpless, they hurried into flight.

Never did his utterance enter an ear but it became

adorned with earrings of unpierced pearls.

Never did his verse enter a heart but it became,

once healed of its ailment, no longer afflicted.

A noble soul, who has made dignity his robe,

and I see dignity as the robe of every refined man.

A chieftain, noble, a lord and magnanimous leader,

clothed in glory, he sits wrapped in lordship.

Never have the horses of pride raced at an assembly

but he came on a chestnut and with a gray steed.

He mounted exalted rank until it jostled

the edges of heaven with its shoulder as it moved.

He made the Pleiades his sandal, for its strap

was the crescent, gleaming without a veil.

He grew up amid glories and exalted rank,

and grandeur, in wondrous—most wondrous—honor.

What boasting in lofty honors that crown him,

when they have thus become like a slipper or a sock?

The full moon of perfection—and every full moon has its origin

in the West, emerging like a curved sword.

If he were not in the West, Dhukā would not set,

for gaining light is her greatest quest.

Do you not see her radiance at sunrise,

growing strong, then weakening as she nears the west?

That is only from her extreme nearness

or her distance from the one of most wondrous beauty.

He has no fault save what he possesses of

honor and glory, revered among the noble.

Never have I seen nobility among the noble

but it sprang from this noblest of noble men.

One whom daunting difficulties have tested and found

in him the most seasoned master of sound judgment.

His constant pursuit is only noble deeds and generosity,

while no other perseveres in noble deeds.

His gain is nothing but praiseworthy deeds and praise,

and he has earned nothing but praiseworthy deeds and praise.

I have been brief in praising his noble person,

and I deem short of reach whoever does not speak at length.

If I go to extremes in his praise, I invent nothing;

rather, I am neither excessive nor outlandish.

I have praised his noble person with a poem

that would not be sweet were it not in his praise.

Radiant, one of the choicest poems, she has come

a virgin swaying gracefully, never previously wed.

She adorned herself in his praise and anointed herself

with musk from the scent of fragrant praise.

She dyed herself with praise of him and thanks to him,

and with nothing but that praise did she dye herself.

She is lawful to her unmarriageable kinsman, though you are in ritual consecration,

yet forbidden to the distant stranger.

She was brought to you as a bride, though you are no suitor;

how can she be brought, never having been sought before?

If you accept her, that is her hope;

her joy lies in attaining her desire.

And if you drive her away, though you are the most generous receiver

of her like, my reproach falls upon fortune.

Remain safe, and ever serene, free of the world's murk,

as long as the doves' melodious voice is sweet,

or as long as Ibn Fath Allah perfumes his verse

with sweet fragrance from the musk of your praise.