أشمس بهاء بالهلال تنقب — أبو المعالي الطالوي

Is it a sun of splendor, veiled by a crescent,

or the full moon, whose radiance cannot be concealed?

Or the bright stars shining in the darkness,

revealed by black night upon the Milky Way’s throne?

Is it a keen fragrance from arar blossoms, borne

by the east wind—or musk from Darin hastening near?

Is it a flowing stream of wine, or chains of gold,

or strings of pearls, or beads being pierced?

Is it a spacious garden lit with chamomile,

where rainclouds pour and masses of cloud spill down?

Or blossoms appearing through luxuriant bowers,

where clouds trail the hems of striped robes?

Or is it the beloved phantom of Asma,

journeying at midnight, while her abode grows distant and near?

Through it I recalled the prime of youthful passion and neighbors

who departed, while my heart blazed at their separation.

I say, having seen gray upon my temples

since the morning we parted and tears poured down:

May God water the fresh bloom of youth and love,

and may a streaming cloudburst rain generously upon that springtime.

How many a graceful maiden there, at morning, did I engage

in talk of love, like wine—no, sweeter still:

a full-figured beauty, swaying with youth and ease

as a meadow sways when lush with grass;

a tender, delicate girl gazing with eyes like those

of a young wild cow looking toward its herd amid the thicket;

one of the supple maidens—her waist was barren,

slender, while her haunches were richly abundant.

I have not forgotten when she came, making sway the folds

of brocade upon her, embroidered in gold.

She asks about a hidden meaning which, once revealed,

shows me the beauties’ sighs bidding welcome.

It is a four-letter name: if you seek to reverse it

and soften a hamza in it when transposing,

there appears the name of a garden in Syria, like Paradise,

toward whose like the heart yearns and longs.

Its first letter together with its last is seen

as the definite article, whose sound is sweet.

And if its first letter becomes the second,

that is the name of a bird that sings of love in gardens.

Yet if someday you do not reverse it, then it

now dawns upon the mind and now slips away.

Its second letter with the one following it—so long as your lover

passes all his days amusing himself with it—

and its third with its fourth, when you join it

to its second, reveal the veiled face of my beloved.

No sight beyond it can delight a beholder;

after Sulayma, can love have any other quest?

You see me, once I glimpse it beaming,

struggling against longing, though longing is stronger.

O accomplished man whose thought has raised up poetry,

whose judgment in the field of inquiry is sound;

you who surpass the sons of your age, and who has attained

an ambition accompanied by the two lofty Simaks,

ponder an answer that has dispelled the blackness of night,

declaring and clearly expressing the meaning of Habab.

Take it as a garden drenched by the streaming rain of life,

whose leafy boughs have begun to speak eloquently.

May you remain in safety, might, and exalted rank,

perfecting the rhymes of poetry and destroying its opposite,

for all time, while a dove sings in a grove

and a star wheels above the summit of the Milky Way.