ذنب إلى الدهر ما له شافع — أبو المعالي الطالوي

An offense against Time, with none to intercede for it,

and a setback whose calamity none can avert:

excellence hard to attain, accompanied by

a keen heart and striking speech,

and a disposition whose way is fidelity when

a cringing age betrays its little folk.

So oppose these, and you will pass your evenings in ease,

and in tranquil living, whose courtyard is wide.

Forsake the study of the sciences, abandoning them in hatred,

for they bar livelihood and cut it off.

And shun the man of merit to attain your wishes;

keep company with the ignorant, and your star will prosper.

For whoever in this age possesses literary learning

eats, as long as he lives, into a wasted gut.

As for poetry, take it up: how often I knocked with it

upon people's ears, yet you found no listener,

with many a far-traveling poem that became a byword,

spoken of by the refined, accomplished man.

No fault is laid on it—may you be safe—except

the harshness of slumbering luck—may you be spared it.

Its savage age held it back until

an age that never cooed for a man of merit.

In it the suns of the sciences have set,

and none of the stars of merit rises.

A band ruled in it, and following it came

sheep among humankind, untended and grazing.

And to one enamored of eminence I gave counsel—

and religion is sincere counsel, brought by the Lawgiver.

Give up seeking it: many a young man

is deceived by its beguiling mirage.

And lay aside from the soul some of what it has borne

of the burden of an age that debases its worth.

In it the lame have ascended to heaven;

do you not see that its eagle has fallen?

Its schools end up in the hands of fools,

as plunder, with no protector and no defender.

No student is there, save a ruined remnant,

and no learning, only a humbled teacher.

All this—and a night beneath its sleepless watcher's gaze,

in which the Milky Way gleams like a highway.

In it the stars remain bewildered,

walking along the horizon with a limping gait.

I pass the night without tasting sleep in it,

brooding over the youth of my splendid prime.

I remember it with passion keeping it company,

and youth was an aid, an intercessor with love.

Beauties of a dwelling with radiant landmarks—among them

one fair of neck, whose gaze beguiles.

I spoke with her of Time's fury and what

I suffered in it from my idle fortune.

Then she laughed aloud and turned to reproach me;

and reproach restrains and subdues a noble man.

I marvel that you complain, when I have seen you in

Ibn Bustan's garden, its flourishing bough,

the chief judge of al-Sham, our master,

whose bounty I have never ceased to hope for.

The finest man, sought with swift strides

by the noble camels of hopes from a vast wilderness.

To him passed his father's learning—

may his resting earth be fragrant—and a benefactor acquired it,

with an ambition whose unfailing guide

is a resolve that cleaves the keen Indian-steel sword,

and speech whose eloquence, if understood by

Sahban, would drive him to destroy himself.

A patron, the bounty of whose gifts pours like rain,

and the door of whose assembly is a refuge for the fearful.

To his heights I came complaining,

before him, presenting my case:

a debt owed by Time, stubbornly withheld by

a most obstinate foe, terrifying to a young man.

Part of that is what the discerning overseer sees fit

to distribute from the congregational mosque's stipend.

And a certain need in my soul has not been fulfilled;

my silence about it before you is an intercessor:

the fulfillment of a promise you generously undertook

to a slave in bondage, submissive at your door.

His contentment lies in what his master deems fit,

for the best slave is content with an allotted share.

And may you be safe and endure, as long as a bough is climbed

by gray doves, and as long as a cooing bird varies its song on the hills.