1
When you are absent from my eyes, what do you miss?
You fill my eyes to the brim. I am absent from myself.
You speak only to scold. If your lips begin, anyone
Who talks back will find their tongue absent.Blood and dirt, Kokan named Khosrau’s intention:
Witness this disaster. Alert the absent.My thoughts don’t leave you though yours have left me.
So long as you are with me: enough. Let me be absent.
He is the day and I am the night, still, Hafiz says, Mahwi,
If you desire His constant presence, never be absent.
2
Love’s hermitage is my republic. I won’t leave
Even if it burns. I’m just a handful of kindling.Prayer didn’t touch her, so I became the dirt under her feet.
I reject the Order of Isolation. I choose the road.I sought justice, I protested. A gnostic, rough, she
Said, “Tomorrow is Eid. Your blood will henna my feet.”I abandoned prayer’s red face.
I live in shame’s yellow face.The Gardner named me “apple,” but I fruit quince.
Lose the self, become bound, measure mud, burn:
Love has so much work to do. I stand in line.
What grace: she lights me on fire. She calls me sheikh.
She calls it ash, straw, this cane I hold in my hands.
With a wink’s blade, she cut my chest open.
She threw a little water at this dry hothouse.
In return for cold words, I sigh blazing breath.
He who throws a stone at me, I throw a storm at him.
Thank God, Mahwi is aware: the world is a cesspool.
When people get drunk, why should I seize on the trespass?
3
Those enthroned today, surrounded by ululating creatures,
Will be corpses tomorrow, surrounded by shrieking creatures.Tomorrow will cut and cut them down. Had they faith,
They would not be so eager for this world, these creatures.The antichrist takes shape in the thought of knowledge’s people.
Some follow it in herds, these creatures.The full world is so tempting for an Iblis like Iblis.
He shelters in sly whispers and holds sway over creatures.
Your curtained face riots with a hundred doomsdays.
For once, take the veil off. See the earthquake of creatures.
We thought this life was water, but it was only mirage.
All drown though they swim in drought, these creatures.
In the market universe, everyone’s shop hours last his lifetime.
Jewels for shit, Mahwi, this is the behavior of creatures.
4
If I can’t see worship’s tyranny by wine’s light, what can I do?
If I can’t cure night with a candle like this, what can I do?
All that my heart has left in its warehouse is bitter melancholy.
With this cash, I bargain with love sickness. What else can I do?
The mullah’s hand and his beloved’s hair, a zunnar, don’t share a path.
So, a sheikh, I choose the Christian Order. What else can I do?
Before that beauty’s path, I made myself dust.
Still, she wouldn’t step on me.
So, I throw the whole world’s dust on my head. What else can I do?
For so long, the riotous city of love has gone dead silent.
If I can’t incite revolution by the law of madness, what else can I do?
My eyes have no more water to cry. I am prostrate at the doorstep.
My black year is dry. If I don’t pray for rain, what else can I do?
For you, I make the world my enemy. I bring my case against all.
If I don’t quit you, quit the world, what else can I do?
My loved ones abandoned me. I don’t fit. Death, hurry up!
If death doesn’t excuse me from this failure of life, what else can I do?
Oh, Mahwi, here is Leila who sets our date for Judgment Day.
Until that day arrives, I’ll sigh and shriek. What else can I do?
5
People in this world are such people of this world that if only for one day in
Each century I were such a person of God, I would be a prophet.Don’t belittle the tears and sighs and sobs of your homeless,
Those floods of uncertainty—each: an arrow, a heart-finder, a musket bullet.
No one becomes my one. No beloved stands at that doorstep.
God, you cure me. I am one with no one, with no doorstep.
Don’t surround me with gossips. Forget the smug
Who accuse love and blame mind; be deaf and dumb.The slippery tongue and ear doesn’t repeat or absorb proverbs.
Useless, eager, they come and go, the conspirator and condemner.
The miracle of love gathers my four seasons:
My tears are red, my pallor yellow, my lip dry, my eyes wet.
Jealous of your line and mark, lip and face, your wisps of hair,
The violets, tulips, amber, jasmine musk and the Water of Life all wear black.
Dig out the liver, loose the bloody tears, pierce the chest.
Glance and see the work of the dagger, scalpel, and arrow.
When she looked at her notebook of confusions and calamities,
The black-lucked, among them all, Mahwi was greatest.
6
When the heart melts for you, that day you will believe:
when He shows Himself like the sun, the heart like dew disappears.
When my soul understood that you wished it to leave, it left.
When he sees the beloved tire, a lover needs no instruction to leave.
I said: on this doorstep, in this place, let me rest a while.
He said: a lover must live doorstep to doorstep, city by city: leaving.
Banish the watchman who soils this sweet doorway.
He pleaded, Why run off a dog so needed at the doorstep?
He said: Mahwi, you and I are as sun and shadow.
When my greatness appears to you, your grace disappears.
7
Heard or unheard, I moan and wail.
Ears given or withheld, I sigh and sob.
The duty of the sincere is to observe sincerity’s rites.
Discovered or hidden, I remember with the heart.
A Behistun of loving a Shirin has come.
If I can or cannot, I imitate Farhad.
The watery blade relieves any thirsty-lipped but me.
Practical or not, I appeal this oppression.
My lessons in love come only from nightingale and butterfly.
Reaching or falling short, still I practice the teaching.
The elder planned the murder of a person such as Asfandeyar.
Obliging or not, I entreat that king.
Soon enough, oh, Mahwi, I will wear out the long path.
My hand empty or full, still I strive.
8
Caught in a current of weeping gore, see how I am for you.
My psyche festers with grievous infection, see how I am for you.
The watchman, that dog, desired it, so you murdered me.
See how you are for me.
I pray for your hand and your blade. I do.
See how I am for you.
May they never name you brutal. Cut me down.
Will I ever divulge your cruelty?
See how I am for you.
I buried each blazing breath, I scorched my psyche,
so I wouldn’t busy your heart with my moaning.
See how I am for you.
Invent a reason, kill me. That way, ruin your form:
Let me divert the evil eye from you.
See how I am for you.
I wash my eyes with weeping water so blood
May never mar your place.
My eyes, see how I am for you.
In his heart, Mahwi has no concern for himself, only for you.
Loving you, I raise grief.
See how I am for you.
9
I wonder at the mind of he who thinks himself immortal,
But, like Lord and Lady, is always happy-heart, without affliction.
The immortals advance, yard by yard, toward death.
He who fears death, it’s plain, is hideous and mortal.
Before the door of God-given love, he is red-faced:
Miserable, tearful, bloody-hearted, yellow-faced.
Among the ancient intimates familiar to festivity, only two remain:
One, a moth, shares my affliction.
One, a nightingale, shares my pitch.
Brother, if all this fault falls on that neck, it’s a shame,
Like dust quickly accumulating on pure glass.
Around me a wall: agony.
Above, a canopy: vapor of sighs.
For love, I have been kinged among possessors of scrims.
How can He enter my eyes, at once elementally water?
It is impossible to enter His heart, a continent of stone.
He saw the minute particles of my dust; He changed paths.
He said, I fear my core will rely ultimately on these atoms.
I see the people of the heart either stoned or lynched.
Republic of Love, if you desire vitality,
it is only in stones and trees.
In the garden of apples and quince, when His image, His chin is mentioned,
The apple becomes ashamed of his red,
the quince afraid of his yellow.
So, I am poor and He is king.
Under the precept of love, Mahwi,
It’s enough what’s between us: my black luck, His black face.
10
The world is a cabaret. Don’t stand still. Move through.
Who survives it without being debased by it?
Life consoles you one or two days.
On the third,
It dissolves, the mother of all ghost disease.
It is, at the same time, sour and sweet faced.
Its spite is a lie.
Its kindness is a lie.
Both just lies.
It leans back on your back to back break.
Today, you thank God.
Tomorrow: oh, brother.
Old age makes my beautiful garden’s sapling chaff.
Newness makes my hope-tree’s branches sprout.
The branch’s neck bows to the flower’s high head.
Look, my eyes, above the eyes is the brow.
Mahwi, die and you survive death.
Death is ahead of you.
Before that, come.
Go.
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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