لجاجة قلب ما يفيق غرورها — Sardar

The persistence of a heart whose delusion never wakes,

And the longing of a soul whose simplest need goes unmet;

And an eye that drives its clouds toward the abandoned camps

Whenever anguish in the breast exhales its sigh.

I bid it rain upon every dwelling;

Were it land, its seas would sink away.

An eye cannot both search for traces and weep;

Do you two know an eye I might borrow?

We stood in rows among the dwellings, as though they were

Scattered pages and we their written lines.

My companion says, as gazelles pass to our right,

‘Is that the one you love?’ I say, ‘Her likeness.’

Though their necks and eyes resemble hers,

Their haunches and breasts are quite different.

How strange: their familiar ones turn away,

While their wild ones draw near to us in fear.

That is only because the gazelles of Amir

Trust that their visitors are their falcons.

Was what her suns inflicted on my heart insufficient,

That her moons came to help them?

We retreated for fear of their females;

Why, then, do their males call for combat?

By God, I do not know, when they looked at us that morning,

Whether those were arrows or cups they passed around.

If arrows, where was their whirring?

If wine, where was its joy?

My two companions, ask leave for me to taste her wine;

Her veils have already granted me leave to approach.

Suppose she shrinks from a lover who frightens her;

Am I anything but a visiting phantom?

You two told me there is no paradise on earth;

Yet here are its houris riding above the saddles.

Do not think my heart is free, for

Her enclosure is a prison, and I am its captive.

Even for thirsty camels long kept from water, reaching it is hard

When its stream lies between her lips.

I see you, protected precinct; tell me by what means

You reached the place where her front teeth met you.

I know nothing of her; do you know

Whether her mouths or her throats have the better claim to her?

A moist breeze is pleasant in every dwelling,

But the heat of every land is not.

The boughs of the ban trees in the land of Bisha:

Their shade and their heat are dear to me.

Its arar is more delicious than freshly picked roses,

And its barir sweeter than strained honey.

Go gently in love: we are a company

Whose conscience remains chaste when it wins in love.

To the lover whose lot is separation, it is all the same

Whether she settles down or sets out early.

By your life, the enchantment of beauties has no power

Over my soul, and gray hair is its warning.

The white hairs are nothing but stars

Rising from my head, their light within my heart:

A radiance that guided me to a noble man

Whose paths are the easy and difficult reaches of meaning.

Through him God answered the caliphate when it called

For a vizier: he was the one its heart had held within.

Through him its assembly brimmed and its fortune shone;

Its valley filled and its gaps were closed.

Its tents boasted of him on the day of departure,

And its palaces took pride in him on the day of residence.

Before him its wonders had lain hidden;

He revealed them until even their denier acknowledged them.

His judgments are strings of pearls

With which its crown and throne are set.

No wonder its pillars rise high

When this generous, resolute man is its vizier.

Tell the nights to turn as they will:

Their affairs rest in the hands of one with mighty arms.

A hand fragrant with noble deeds and steeped in them;

Perfume itself is only its musk and scent.

If the seal of the caliphate is its ornament,

What further honor could the proudest seek?

Its bracelet would not have been fashioned without his wrists,

Nor its silk preserved without his shoulders.

Hopes held in the breast of the vizierate were fulfilled

Through him to their utmost, so that its vows fell due.

It turned its face from every seeker of pleasure

Toward a lawful suitor before whom it could unveil.

Who but Fakhr al-Dawla was fitted for it?

Not every star in the sky gives light.

Now we have seen in its halls of honor

Halls whose breasts are filled with loftiness.

It is as though a lion sat upon those couches,

With growls whose roar none answers.

When people stand before his den,

The reckless and the composed alike become equal there.

So great is the calm they have been clothed in

That birds nearly flutter above those heads.

Leave glory to the man who climbs every summit

Whose steep approaches tax even a docile mount;

To the man whose informed thoughts give him certainty

About what the future of events will bring.

Do you not know that ostriches are on the ground

While falcons nest in the mountain clefts?

All the sons of Hashim have learned

Through what man of resolve their cord has been strengthened:

A man mature in judgment who, if they pressed him against

The mountains of Sharawra, would make their rocks tremble;

One dwelling at the farthest reaches of generosity, asking

The mounts of those in need where they are going.

May God, Lord of humankind, reward most richly

The mounts whose caravan trots bearing noble gifts;

And water the steeds that traveled with courage and bounty

With abundant rain from clouds that pass by night and morning.

They carried them from the heights of the house of Rabia

And Bakr, with rain clouds whose fresh water overflows.

They crossed branches of Amir's noblest stock,

Guarded by honor and escorted by success.

A band from the house of Jutha aided them;

When the caller repeats his call, their champion is mighty.

They are protectors whose swords and spears bring death,

And whose graves are the bellies of desert wolves.

Their tents have tall brown spears for poles,

And fine-bred horses standing near for curtains.

Their serving bowls are courtyards broad as hills,

And their cooking pots are like steadfast mountains.

When guests arrive at night, their bowls sing,

And their sheep and camels cry out mournfully.

The caravan had barely moved before

The hills and weighty mounds of Iraq quivered toward them.

When it came into view, Baghdad almost sent

Its dwellings walking and its houses galloping.

It was nothing less than a migration to Yathrib

For which the Prophet's kin rightly owe thanks.

What a sun, whose east is the sunset of the sun,

And whose rising is wherever it chooses to appear!

You restored the soul to the body of the vizierate

When no one expected its revival or resurrection.

For a time it stayed with another, in an impure state;

Now this age is its period of cleansing and purity.

It is right that its rightful holder be granted it

And that its borrower be made to return it.

When a man unworthy of a beauty possesses her,

Her adviser counsels her to divorce him.

Did Ibn Darast suppose the vizierate was a hillside

In Persia whose full moons had been assigned to him?

The heights of glory are no slippery slope

For a stumbling, knock-kneed, clumsy-footed man.

Did weaving in Tuwaj not keep him occupied

Enough to stop him grasping for a rank he cannot reach?

I say, though his curtain hides him from us:

Take care; veils stand before shameful deeds.

Folly attached him to Ibn al-Husayn;

May its master fail, and wretched be his associate.

He infected him with his judgment and destroyed him,

As Qasir once brought about al-Zabba's ruin.

Is his falling star anything but its dim follower?

Is his wild wind anything but its west wind?

His own braying delighted him beneath the pavilion;

Only their own donkeys please she-asses.

I had not thought the wolf would make a stand

When a fierce beast had seized the reins of affairs.

If the land of lamb-herders does not receive him,

He will be hamstrung by a fang from which its victim cannot recover.

Do not put aside courage because you scorn him;

Small things have sometimes brought great calamities.

I wish I had met your glory, reciting

Virtues I could weave and bring to light for it.

But I went far afield

To honor a self whose reproachers had treated it harshly.

Humiliation drove me from the land of Baghdad,

Its pressures sharp as the thrust of a long spear.

For such things saddles are set on fine horses,

And pack saddles are fitted to tall, lean camels.

I nearly forgot my eloquence on that account,

Save that a dove's cooing is in its nature.

We left the hills of al-Zawra, where

Grasshoppers leap and their chirring rises in the heat.

I said, God's lands are broad and spacious;

Can I not find a small hollow where I may take refuge?

Lions, too, may leave a place by choice

When the neighborhood dogs persist in barking.

May the nights settle at your dwelling, their mounts at rest,

Their days and months returning again and again.

May their age be dated from the birth of your good fortune,

And their eras counted by the lifetimes of eagles.

Here, take this poem: its pearls could purchase a crown;

Its Farazdaq is its diver, and its Jarir too.

Its beauty in your eyes has grown because

Its psalm is recited within hearing of David.