Is it from recollection of neighbors in the valley of Dhi Salami
That you mix tears with blood as they flow from your eyes?
Or perhaps sweet breezes blowing from Kadhima's direction?
Or bolts of lightning that flash in the depths of Mount Iddam?
What's wrong with your eyes? You say, "Stop!"
But that only increases their painful downpoour;
Or your heart? You say, "Wake up!"
But it wanders even further astray in distraction!
Does someone so flooded with love think it can be hid
Behind such a downpour of tears or a heart's raging fires?
Without love's passion you would never have wept so over the traces of your beloved's camp,
Nor spent sleepless nights recalling the fragrance of a willow or the mountain your darling walked in.
Nor would the mere memory of tents and those who dwelt there
Have draped you in mourning clothes, weeping and wasting away.
How can you deny such a love, when true tears
And real heartbreak testify so strongly against you?
The sorrow of love has etched two salty troughs down your face
And branded gaunt marks on it as pallid as yellow and blood-red roses.
--How true! In the night a vision of the one I long for came and deprived me of sleep.
But love is famous for impending pleasures with pain!
O you who fault me for this vestal love, accept my excuse--
Yet if you judged fairly, you would find me blameless.
May you never have to live like this! I can't even keep it a secret
From my critics, I'm so feverish and lovesick!
You have given me good advise, but I can't hear it--
A lover's ears are deaf to the outcries of love-critics.
How can I listen? I don't even trust the counsel of gray hairs,
And everyone knows old age is guileless when it comes to good counsel!
-Shaykh Hamza Yusuf's translation of the first chapter of the Burda of Imam al-Busiri known as The Poem of the Cloak. Sandala Limited 2002. pgs. 2-4.
Available (I believe in limited quantity here)
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