I
In the grief-struck eyes of the beloved face,
Kindred of golden dunes and crimson skies.
Hidden beneath webs of white cotton lace,
Rests the intoxicating draught of eyes.
May the Saqi’s drunken eyes remain well,
And the wine-cups shall be full to the brim.
Who is this whirling drunkard? Who dwells,
In the streams of tears, and sings Mansur’s hymns.
This heretic, love-addicted fool says why
One dies enshrined in tipsy eyes of thine:
“I come from the temple of Magi
Intoxicated without the passing of wine.”
In this tipsy, loneliness of mine
My love was unyielding, pure and divine.
II.
It is on dreadful nights such as tonight,
That my heart yearns for love’s fiery embrace,
Full of devotion, prepared for disgrace,
I seek the crumbling white minaret’s sight.
But find only the preacher’s cold spite,
No gods, nor angels inhabit this place;
Heart-sickened, the believer starves for grace,
One goes plying back to the age-old rite.
Disillusioned heart, like the rebel-lord,
Returning home after a failed revolt
Nestles deeply in henna-laden arms,
Listens once again to the rebec’s chord,
Suffers, once again, Sinai’s lightning bolt,
Revolves around Saqi’s flattering charms.
III.
When in the burning fire of cold
Fever-dreams, I clutch at the melody
Of melancholy, erupting from old
Throats that chant the unending elegy.
That holy, half-a-moment of mortal
Ecstasy, sending tremors down my spine,
Like the moth dancing around the fatal light,
I, too, encompass the beloved’s shrine.
Nay! it is not simple to venture on
This journey unto annihilation.
And so in the desert’s cold, crimson dawn
The majnun cries, in complete elation:
“What else can love be, if not the suicidal
Destruction of the self’s masquerading idol?