تحدث البرق عن سعدي فما كذبا — Abn Alsaati

Lightning spoke of Saʿdā and did not lie.

And tears explain what it dictated through what they wrote.

It parts, flashing crosswise, to reveal the likeness of her smiling mouth—

if only it possessed that tooth-luster and cool sweetness.

A sword of yearning: never were its edges drawn

against the vitals of patience in their absence only to glance aside.

And if its flash travels through a watch of night,

it whitens whatever was dyed of the horizons’ locks.

And a wakeful one—the eye gave it its slumber,

and no generous soul permits refusal of what it asks—

keeps my eyelid awake, deceives me, then flares with light,

until hidden yearning stirs; then the light fades.

A fire: when an east breeze stirs it by night,

its flash turns the charcoal of dark nights into gold.

O absent ones! No, by glory, never has

my eye—much less my heart—lost absent ones like them.

If I possessed what you have become more entitled to

than I, I would soothe a heart that has so often trembled.

I weep for the slender figures and what their waistcloths enfold,

while my reprover takes them for branches and dunes.

A dwelling: if I could, in my yearning, while it lies barren,

I would slaughter tears and clouds in its two courtyards.

The wish for it is sweet within my heart, yet it is impossible

for the wisher to attain everything he seeks.

And a night when the full moon was our cupbearer,

passing meteors around an orbit of her drinkers.

A virgin wine: when deflowered with water, she treats us

in earnest, though she plays within her cups.

Red with bashfulness—yet when she is mixed,

we cannot tell whether she reddens from bashfulness or anger.

With cool, sweet water her ember grows,

and I have never heard of water kindling flame.

How noble this daughter of the vine, whom bareness adorns!

And what a beloved she is, necklaced with bubbles!

She clothes the drinking companion in delight when he tastes her,

as though what he drank were the sun’s radiance.

O wakeful watcher of the night when its scorpions slept,

and you who brave calamity where sweet water has turned to torment,

with the pale camels you attained the hope I cherish,

far away—we are among mounts that brought us to Aleppo.

Darting from the skin of night, you would think them

lightning flashes that complain of neither weariness nor pain.

I kept ascending toward her in resolve and night travel—

may it not fail—until I reached the full moon and the clouds.

I remember her figure, gray-haired with age,

and today she struts in the two robes of love and youth.

If lightning shifted its glance below her, it would fall,

or if a star directed its gaze toward her, it would stumble.

I fear and hope in her whose deeds were cruel

through rejection, though her dream-phantom made reunion beautiful.

She drew her brows together; then her glances charged.

Think, then, of a coward facing the bow and arrows.

Nor would he show meek submission before calamity—

that fearful man—unless a blade were drawn from her glance.

I melt in jealousy over those tresses,

when they play with the anklets at times when she lets them loose.

I have never told passion and its tyranny,

“Gently!” nor the torment of sickness for her, “Ease up!”

And my greatest concern is an envier who seems an adviser:

I can scarcely bear to hear him, while he lavishes reproach on me.

And a woman judge who pronounces my tears foolish,

though they have made them an upright witness to love.

I trusted her two eyes, and both betrayed my fortitude;

so after her, put no trust in wide eyes.

And I adore her stinginess as protection for her beauty,

yet no man’s hand ever gained by loving stinginess.

May God water the ruins of the sanctuary with every downpour

pouring from rain clouds—not a sprinkling or dew.

And if no cloud rains generously on Saʿdā, O Saʿd,

then may no land receive rain or grow herbage.