1.
The fall wind brushes my flowers and covers my vineyard.
My liver, like a nightingale, feels fall’s sorrow in a hundred places. When I saw the flower’s petals captured and taken by the wind, I fell, went crazy. Amazed, I lost my tongue.
Waxwings, come. Until we die together, let’s cry together. Your pure cedar is gone. My pure soul is gone. Nightingale, come. Until we have our souls back, let’s moan.
Your rose garden, my heart’s sorrow—both are gone. Oh, mineshaft of milk and sugar, oh, flower-thief, heart-thief, Oh, new flower on the flowering tree in the garden of my heaven,
No one knows the secret of that mouth, the love of that waistline. My tears shed all the heart’s secret speech. Such gossips. You are much sweeter than Leila, so I am this plain’s Majnun, this era’s Farhard.
My work is to moan over my injured heart. My labor is to cry over my heavy illness.
Your hair’s ends hold me captive to your neck.
I am the owl, yet I love morning. They say a smile or kiss of yours gives life. Until I die, I won’t know the secret of that miracle.
Your eyebrows forbid me the pleasure of your alluring glance. My Qibla is gone into the wine of the old, drunken magi.
She pleads, “The minute I come to you, my eyes, give me your soul.”
So, bartender, give me a cup, for I worry and will worry.
Your glances and grins, they came intending to plunder my brain, body, and heart.
She is a crowd of huntsmen and I a new spring. She hunts and hunts me, yet deaf and innocent.
Wafa’i’s wailing made mountains begin to speak and moan,
But not once did they affect you, my sighs and shouts.
2.
From my head to my toes, I cried out, burning, and my beloved didn’t come.
I blackened my eyes with the dust from her path, and my being’s comfort didn’t come.
Her line and mark is a meadow, but I can’t see the colors of my careless beauty.
The Queen of my hopelessness, with her fine hair and pale brown face, didn’t come.
I cried booming like spring clouds, but the laughter of that flower, that tussled hair, didn’t come.
Because my flower has no mercy, bloody eyes drown the Pleiades.
I am hushed, I keen. Why didn't my full moon come?
Her hair, a circling zunnar, became my mihrab.
The striking Turkish infidel, my beloved non-Muslim didn’t come.
I became a crazy, thirsty lip, bewildered in shadows of grief.
The heart-thief in her broad heights, my animals’ water, didn’t come.
The Ka’aba of my soul, my beloved, I’m amazed: still she hasn’t appeared.
The Qibla of my prayers, the physician for my mysterious illness, didn’t come.
I moan like a ney, I mourn like a disciple of the nightingale’s order.
The queen of the flower’s sugared lips and wind-blown hair didn’t come.
I did not see my flower’s desirous smile. The bud of my heart became bloody.
My insides and outsides burned. The voice of my spring lightning didn’t come.
However much I cried from love’s desire, my head was never empty.
I drowned in storms and still the relief for my burns didn’t come.
Like Wafa’i, how much should I cry and mourn and say,
“From my head to my toes, I cried out, burning, and my beloved didn’t come”?
3.
The heart moans through every mouth. Separation’s heat burns. For the rose’s face, a nightingale sings of sighs and heartbreak.
Watery eyes and the fiery heart wait for their thief.
Oh, God, separation’s illness, how heavy and impossible it is to bear.
With my soul on my lip, I wait for you by Sinai’s light.
Just once, show yourself because you want to. Death is my desire. The sign and glance of your eye pierced my heart.
I have become the target for the Turks, they have cut my liver in pieces.
Don’t let the one who sighs after the aliph of your height be destitute without your face.
I will support heaven’s arrival for any among the people of oneness.
She shook her hair. It fell in her face. The regiment of hearts rejoiced.
Those predestined for heaven, the people of the Prophet, will never find hell.
There’s no door for me to reach that’s so high that I won’t come back.
It’s impossible to heap a thousand crimes and accusations on her face.
Her hunting eyes killed me. A wink and a smile brought me back.
Injury, illness, sulking are all like fresh juice to me.
Remove all veils. Push away the darkness, your hair.
How long should my heart be unhappy, lonely, breaking?
The rose smiled in the face of the morning wind. The world became pleasant.
Or is it my breath that has perfumed your glowing smile?
Your eyes and line arrived, but didn’t have any mercy on me.
Oh, the man who is recently wealthy is always a hypocrite.
Your hair makes me fall on my face, distraught.
Your wisps and face are hyacinth and flower, or are they light in the darkness?
That idol of hair, unequaled, makes melancholy govern my head.
Eyes, a deer of sapling height, eyebrows, crescent moons, cheeks, flowers,
Flowers that make me lust after the sugared lips.
Amber hair, coral scent, tulip face, moon forehead,
For your face, those eyebrows, those eyelashes, I bring my hands to prayer.
Oh, the mihrab and Qibla are a lantern to the people on the day of mercy.
Your beauty musses me like your mussed hair.
Oh, lantern of Muslims and infidels, it’s time for bravery and kindness.
I died without knowing what fire consumed me.
The yield of a glance, the path of lovers, is all wonder.
I died without reaching the Qibla: your arched eyebrows.
So, oh, Qibla, for people of intention, how long will this confusion last?
The lover faced you and sold her arrival.
She has given heaven her soul.
You’re not a man, Wafa’i, but this is your chance.
4.
Tonight, in my dreams, I was a lantern, the heart was a lantern, being was a lantern.
Ah, in last night’s life, the body was a lantern, her body was a lantern.
Once an angel, once a fairy, once a virgin’s eye, and once an angel,
Once a moon, once Jupiter, once the sun, and once a lustrous lantern.
Color by color, her hair shone. My mouth by her mouth, her face appeared.
Is she forty lanterns or a full-moon lantern or a hundred-colored lantern?
Her face, through her hair, appeared: the face of mercy.
It was new spring, a spring night, a lantern newly lit.
Her laughing mouth, her face a circle surrounded by wisps—
It’s like sitting beside the spring of life, under the moon full as a thousands of lanterns,
The splendor of seven skies, the beauty of the earth’s surface,
Like a king’s throne and a king’s castle, a lantern.
The hyacinth’s glow, the rose’s glow, the half-sight of drunken eyes—
Intoxicating, she lengthened my life, like nights in a bar, like a lantern.
Wisps, marks, lines adorn her face.
The flower garden had no lantern but hyacinth and basil.
She gave me light: she turned her face to me.
I saw my nights become days.
I burned. I was amazed. I was a lantern.
Or was I a lantern?
The heart on one side, the body on the other, were canebrakes that caught fire.
Mosque, temple, and church remain, shining as full lanterns.
Trees and stones burned, like me.
The entry is gone. The porch is gone. The surface and the substance were lanterns.
The entry, the porch: each a lantern.
Is it a wisp of your hair, your face, or are my nights the days of arrival?
Is it your face, your height or does a lantern hang from that cedar?
I was about to drink and forget the sorrow in the garden of your face.
The rose, like the nightingale, burned like moths around a lantern.
Suddenly, the heart-thief disappeared.
The Judgment Day arrived. Chaos filled the bar.
The bar came to ruin. The lantern cried.
Dilution was a mystery. The lily became deaf and dumb.
Wafa’i became hushed and low like a lantern in the early morning hours.
5.
I’m waiting for the breeze to return from the garden with its good news,
The flower’s command for my nightingale to return.The threatening winter snows and separation weigh on my heart.
Without your promised arrival, a wind, the mountain of my heart blackens.Your hair fans the fire of your face. How
Can the water of my eyes ever put out the fire of my love?Your hair is at fault: my heart, a moth, turned to your face.
Arrival is a flame, lit at night, between candle and moth.
Her letters of love, hair, and mark, prove the heart’s ownership.
That seal’s carvings won’t wash away even under Khurkhura’s waters.
The heart, afraid of her eyes, faced her eyebrows: the mihrab.
The layers of your hair told me: there is no room here.
You heaped your desertion, a mountain, onto my shoulders.
My heart has tired.
Until its hand reaches your hair, it won’t revive.
A hundred times you tossed me into the ocean’s whirlpool: separation.
Each time, the hook of your eyelashes fished me out.
Arrival’s seed doesn’t take root in fields of kindness and love.
I plant happiness to flower—sorrow spreads into thorn.
For a while, you know, head to toe, I have been misery’s house.
When, like the curve to the foot, will I place my head under your feet?
I sacrifice for you.
The heart falls into sorrow’s deep well.
Send just one strand of hair that I might haul it out.
By God, when will the dark night of your desertion end?
I sit, my hands on my knees.
When will the sun return?
Without the sign of “The Wisdom of the Eyes,” your medicine, I won’t recover.
You know distance is a harsh wound.
It won’t heal.
Relentless love of her height has my thoughts tangled:
Hair upon hair.
What can I do?
It’s a knot.
6.
I grieve over you. Don’t take aim at me with the arrows of your eyelashes.
I pine after your face, dearest. Don’t rain arrows down on me.
Enough of this heartbreak over the eyebrow, over the kiss from your lips.
Give me over to the blade. Don’t stop me from crying.
What do I do with your eyebrows?
I am chained to your hair.
Leave me alone. I’m love’s infidel.
Don’t convert me to Islam with your Qibla.
I’m in love with a smile of yours.
Let me cease my sighing and moaning.
I am a nightingale. I’m not a moth.
Take no pleasure from my burning.
My heart doesn’t mind me.
It delights in my insides on fire.
You who haven’t burned, don’t you stop my crying.
With a glance, you bring me before the firing squad of your eyelashes.
Don’t wait. Shoot.
I’ll not be a Turkish captive.
Don't ask me, doctor, how many times my beloved has murdered me.
And don’t cure me.
It would be pointless.
The illness of love is sweetest.
You are not a judge, my liege, you are king of all.
Ask for justice for the victims.
For pity’s sake, be just.
Tell me, which has sweeter handwriting?
The ruby or basil?
Already, her eyes are foxes.
Silence her rubied laughter.
She robs me with her fairy eyes and the truth they hold.
A kiss has made me a foolish child.
Don’t keep me from crying.
Her pure finger draws flowers from Wafa’i’s blood.
She kills me, she says,
“Leave my sex pure.”
The translations are by Alana Marie Levinson-LaBrosse. In a few instances, I have made minor adjustments to the wording of her translations, but full credit for translating the collection belongs to her.
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