Saz-e-Yak Zarra Nahin Faiz-e-Chaman Se Bekaar

Stanza 1

Through the bounty of the garden, not one speck's instrument lies idle;
The shadow of a tulip without its dark spot becomes the black core of spring's heart.

Stanza 2

From the intoxication of the morning breeze, in the guise of green grass,
The watered steel of the mountain's sword is shards of a wine flask.

Stanza 3

The leopard's spots are green as an emerald cup;
The face of the spark is fresh as the fibres of an orange.

Stanza 4

From the intoxication of the clouds, even longing gathers the flowers of delight,
For in this embrace both worlds can be held close.

Stanza 5

Mountain and desert are all thronged with the nightingale's longing;
The sleeping road has woken at the laughter of the rose.

Stanza 6

The bounty of the air makes the cloud entrust, as to an orphan's eyelashes,
The fate of both worlds to a single line of dust.

Stanza 7

If you clip a nail and throw it away, curved like the new moon,
The power of growth will not leave even that idle.

Stanza 8

Every handful of dust tossed to the sky flies off like a turtle-dove;
Every scorched sheet of paper is a net that snares peacocks.

Stanza 9

If in the tavern you long to gather flowers,
Leave a single cup of wine forgotten in a niche of the garden.

Stanza 10

Look for the wave of the rose in the secret chamber of a garden bud
If you lose your turban in a corner of the tavern.

Stanza 11

If the Mani of imagination should paint the garden,
The line of the compass would turn to green grass, like the first down on a young man's cheek.

Stanza 12

Out of ruby, to sing the praises of the King,
The parrot of the mountain's greenery has grown a beak.

Stanza 13

That King of kings, for the building of whose house
The eye of Gabriel became the mould for the bricks of the walls;

Stanza 14

The heaven of the Throne is but the bent shoulders of its labourers;
The thread of eternal grace is the master builder's measuring cord.

Stanza 15

The green of the nine gardens of heaven is but one line of down above the lip of its roof;
The lofty resolve of a hundred mystics is but one height of its rampart.

Stanza 16

Whoever gains from the straw of that place a single blade,
Will ever disdain a fan made of a fairy's wings.

Stanza 17

The dust of the desert of Najaf is the essence of the mystics' journeying;
The eye of a footprint is the mirror of a waking fortune.

Stanza 18

A speck of that dust is a mirror of pride for the sun;
The dust of that desert is, for hope, the pilgrim's robe of spring.

Stanza 19

From there creation seeks the intoxication of grace;
Every wave of dust displays the yawning craving of creation.

Stanza 20

By your bounty, O candle of the chamber of spring,
The moth's heart is lit with festive lamps, and the nightingale's wing is red as the pomegranate flower.

Stanza 21

The hall of mirrors would take wing like a peacock
In its delight in your splendour, longing to behold you.

Stanza 22

From grief for your children, upon the face of the sky
The new moon among the strings of stars is an eyelash shedding pearls.

Stanza 23

For our worship, your footprint is the tablet on which we bow in prayer;
For our discipline, we draw our strength from your fortitude.

Stanza 24

Hidden in your praise is the song in praise of the Prophet;
From your cup the wine of seething mysteries shows plain.

Stanza 25

The grain of the hand raised in prayer is a mirror, that is, of its effect:
On one side the pride of eyelashes, on the other the grief of the thorn.

Stanza 26

Let its pupil make a house of mourning for the fortune of its sight,
That eye which does not hold up a mirror to the dust of your door.

Stanza 27

For the enemy of the Prophet's family, in the pleasure-house of the world,
May the niche in the wall gape like the jaws of a flood.

Stanza 28

Asad, from eye to heart I am a mirror of a single ray of longing;
By the bounty of meaning, the writer's cup is brimming to its line.