أيا وجد أبقيت حتى على صبري — Alhbal

O longing, have you spared even my patience?

O tears, you have let the informers discover my secret.

O heart, if you side with whoever blames me for love,

then may you never leave the fire of passion and estrangement.

O you who reproach me, if you seek my release from love,

then free my heart, for it is bound in captivity’s noose.

Otherwise, leave me alone with passion, for there is no other course:

my heart shall perish, or my tears shall flow.

Your excuse for ceasing to reproach me is plain,

but I have no excuse for abandoning passion.

Reproach has never seized my heart; it only

meets from me the deafness lodged within my ears.

I am enthralled by a languid-eyed one whose glances—

and whose swaying, supple form—put white swords and brown lances to shame.

Whenever his glances raid a lover’s heart,

they swiftly return with booty and victory.

A gazelle—into the marketplace of hearts his eyelids

have brought love from where I know and where I do not.

Whenever he gazes, he teaches Hārūt the lore of sorcery

with his spell-breathing eye, upon the knots of patience.

The bough’s figure imitates him when it stands upright,

and whenever it sways in its green robes.

But far from it! Where is the bough beside him? It has

no mouth-nectar like pure wine, nor pearly freshness of teeth.

I marvel at a wine I have never tasted from his mouth,

although from it I remain drunk for all time.

The letter nūn traced by a side-lock upon the page of his cheek

could not guard the keen blade of his eyes from kasr—breaking.

I confide my complaint to him, and he grows still more cruel

whenever I say, “For once, be mindful of God in my plight.”

To God I complain: within my heart is a burning anguish

by which my patience is constricted whenever its fire is kindled;

and desires of my soul whose attainment is beyond me—

they are what I demand and stipulate of Fate.