بكت وقد أبصرتني ضاحك الشعر — Abn Alsaati

She wept when she saw me, my hair smiling white.

What beauty has a night without the moon's light?

Nor is the sky of beauty alluring

until the stars of blossoms open within it.

At the end of youth's night there has come—

and can a night's darkness endure without daybreak?—

a dawn whose long duration is feared,

while I fear brevity—and my fear will have the last word.

She said, 'You have grown old, though our acquaintance is recent.'

'Away with you! I have not gone gray from age.'

She rejected a tormenting passion for her cheek

from me, because of a blemish on the cheek of life.

How often gray hair has adorned forbearance and knowledge!

What is a bough's beauty but blossom and fruit?

She taunted me for my hopes, false as they were;

yet many a wish is sweeter than fulfillment.

What pleased a young man for a time may come to grieve him;

and what serenity in this world is without trouble?

If the days of his old age have soured his life,

it was long sweet in his other days.

You bear beauty's blessing, its youthful vigor all pride;

and many a blessing passes away through conceit.

How quickly you rush toward desertion and distant parting!

Enough for you are the changes of fortune we shall face.

Sorrow leaves unmistakable traces in the heart;

no good comes to the heart from grief without a trace.

The days, striving hard, have nicked my patience;

indeed, nicks belong to the edge of a well-tempered sword.

Many a night of union had a generous visitor,

who gave sleep victory over the reign of sleeplessness.

And a smiling garden, one of the gardens of the uplands,

with tears of rain in the eyes of its blossoms.

The fair women wished, that overcast morning, to gather

the pearls it scattered around its borders.

Threads of rainclouds settled on it, embroidering

those striped cloaks with the raindrops' needles.

There I drank the shining radiance of the sun—

a dawn from the cup, unveiled by a moon's two hands.

Its stock flowers spent the night yellowing with fear,

while the anemones' bower was adorned with bashfulness.

Whenever I feared a tale-bearer would betray us,

I erased what trailing hems wrote in the dust.

Until, when the veil of dawn was torn there,

the tongues of the waistcloths spoke of my chastity.

May my tears shed in vain ransom him, and what was spilled

by my ears under reproach for him—blood shed without redress.

I yearn for him, yet in loving him I fear

a spear in his stature, or a sword in his dark eyes.

An eye whose languor has set my eyes burning,

and a swaying figure that puts my life's blood in peril.

And young men, sons of letters, worn thin

by homeland and desire lying far away from us.

Bright-faced: when they rode by night toward a purpose,

you saw the night display white markings and forehead blazes.

And if we sit in a gathering of generosity and guidance,

mention of Taj al-Din suffices for our evening conversation.