أصفيتك الود مضطرا ومختارا — أبو زيد الفازازي

I gave you pure affection, compelled and freely choosing,

And did not address you, out of reverence and esteem.

And spared your hearing speech I would burden

With lending the sun light, though it is darkness.

And I said, 'What speech could I deem worthy of him,

When he is foremost in letter-writing and verse?'

At dusk he conceals what is original in his thought;

Thus at dawn he reveals enchantments.

And he casts forth speech without a rival—and who

Can contend with the swelling sea in seafaring?

He has spurned matronly meanings, though they are offered

To him, and sent them among people as virgins.

Pale camels bore them, speeding like birds in flight,

Until I took their saddles for nests.

He brings you effortlessly what would tax the deliberation

Of Abd al-Hamid, and clothes Bashshar with sight.

And even if I made my speech an untouched garden,

And fashioned the letters of my script in it as flowers,

And grant that he effaces flaws by concealing them

Out of generosity—some people do not conceal disgrace.

And suppose he were—may God prolong his joy—

Noble; not all people are noble.

My loyalty suffices him, purified

Of impurities, openly and in secret.

And that I do not see, among all people,

A friend equal to him in character and worth;

And that his devotion to the good he does

Has left others no trace of a claim to it;

And indeed I, before seeing him and knowing him,

And afterward, am like a wronged man who has gained vengeance.

And a letter from him reached me, which he had loaded

With battalions of reproach, coming and going.

So I rose to kiss the footprints of the messenger bearing it,

And said, 'Welcome, welcome, however he comes!'

And longing called down rain when its seal was broken:

Tear-streams that became lines upon the written lines.

Nor did I pass a letter of it as I read it

Without stepping back, in fairness and acknowledgment.

And I preserved it after paying it its due,

By ear, lavishing memorization and repetition upon it.

And I would have hidden it in my eyelid and in my mind,

But I feared water and fire for it.