1
In a field on the peak of your love, the heart’s hawk flew, circling.
Your beauty, flung like a lightning bolt, singed its feathers in flight.At the poet’s competition, I saw on every side insight of the beloved.
Girded in artistry, they all arrived, the love hunters.On one side, Nali and Mahwi; on the other, Salim and Kurdi.
All in the press, the heat of creation, calling on Mawlana.
They rode onto the field of rhetoric, each on an Arabian stallion,In Kurdish, mounted on the horse of meaning, riding Baban land.
That Nali, an adventurer in print, agile in his way,
Took up his poet’s stick and knocked wisdom’s ball from the field.That Rakhsh, by nature tough, schooled the wrestlers.
Salim and Mahwi circled to kiss that horse’s stirrup.
2
The wide knot, after some untangling, passed.
The riot and joy the beloved caused in my heart also passed.I sank onto the beloved’s doorstep. The doorman beat me.
In the eye of my enemy, I had dignity. That also passed.
The lantern flickers out across the night’s distances.
The days of the beloved arriving, these have also passed.
I wish I weren’t stripped, though it is the lunatic’s practice.
When palms tore my collar, I felt it a credit. That has also passed.
Such a deluge, they have no tears left, these dry eyes.
Missing the cypress of your body: a stream that has passed.
Waking or sleeping, I dream of arrival. Enough sorrow, Salim,
The kiss, the embrace, all was a dream that passed.
3
On doomsday, if I desire heaven without your face,
Before everyone who owns a heart, let me be shamed.That height is my doom if on doomsday it appears from any angle
And I don’t bow to the mihrab of her eyebrow, I’ll be damned.The arrival of the beloved, the breath of heaven in May, if it comes upon me
To me, it is Qandil and Lajan even if I’m summering in Masqat.My sorrow is a sea. My heart is a ship, I am a merchant, arrival is the port.
I must either leave port or abandon ship.While I guard you, I am distant from the forbidden.
In a dream, I have only to seek to find the chance of a kiss.Kill me without mercy. That is mercy.
Let me live a martyr in the shadow of your blade.When the wink’s arrow digs into the heart,
The eye’s two lash lines find each other.I would leave my murderer if I possessed any dignity.
Never dare desire pity from the beloved, Salim. I beg:
Let her have no pity for me, so I never get addicted.
4
Every enraged hair on my body is the scalpel’s tip.
The heart in my chest burns as a candle in glass.
Why did you set your wooly self, your beard on fire?
Watch out, stay away, you’re on fire. You boor, go!
A heron’s body, crane’s stride, a saqaqush’s neck, swallow’s head,
A billy goat’s beard, camel’s knees, ostrich’s feet, ass’ mind,A fat cat’s temper, hedgehog’s body, ferret’s nest, hyena’s path,
A hammered nose, collapsed head, brute’s coloring, lousy hair,An ant’s character, lion’s stature, mosquito’s power, elephant ankles,
A spinning head, kinked hair, fingernails spindles heads, ears wide shields.As the camel, as the harpist, a man so tall that when midday comes
He serves his visitors from the sky he rests on his head.How do I examine you? I can’t measure your height.
The highest sycamores of Masydar don’t reach your balls.
You couldn’t originate from any seed, in any womb.
It must be you were born from minarets, not humans.
You are so tall, you are vulnerable. When you sleep,
They can fondle your ass in Baghdad, with your eyes closed in Sulaimani.You aren’t like other people these days, the proof is in your conical shape.
If I organize and count, ‘Uj is your father. That’s enough.
Mirza, forgive me. No more libel.
Why spend my spare cash to slur your manhood, head for head, slight?
5
I sacrifice my body for your whisper, oh morning wind,
You, the messenger ready for every dangerous road.You fan beauties as the moon does heart thieves.
Oh, you comb the hair of white-bodied beauties.
You sweep the homes of dear ones in sanctum.
Servant of spring’s green carpet, in the plains and out.
Pitch haired and moon faced, you crawl
Into sleeping mouths as morning comes.From your breeze rains the honey of the tamarisk tree
Which swayed the bosom of the sugar cane.When you roam the face of the heart-thief, you, a breeze,
Tremble in her hair, head to belt.Without your breath, when will the bloom, her mouth, come to smile?
If not for you, the garden tree wouldn’t fruit.
You revive the plants of the world.
Ra’na grew from you, same as height comes from a tree.
Your mouth is the water of life for the fire of depression.
It’s your movement that brings flame to head in the furnace.
The distress is so great, my heart has narrowed.
The clouds wear the smoke of my breath in the morning.
Fearlessly try to accomplish my request:
Go as a messenger and again come back as a messenger.
My letter goes to the state of Sham, toward Nali.
Every word gives news of the city’s situation.
Apparently, he asked his one-sided friends
About the city founders, each resident, head by head.Since the governor was made homeless by force
No one has seen art shining from anyone’s face.When it became the place of the Ottoman’s rising sun
The thirsty grasses burned, every puddle evaporated.The desperate people of the city didn’t want kebab,
Only liver, fried in the fire of sadness.The people sigh and cry during these days of Ottomans:
I haven’t seen people open their lips like that for happiness.
Saywan is full of the oppressed, high and low.
I see only graves of depression anywhere I look.
This is the place of Ottoman Turks, in or out of the khanaqa.
All disciples are unaware rather than alert.
The pool is full, same as his eyes, but
The water has become chaotic, as have the hearts of heroes.
The field where he and his friends spent time
Belongs now to the Ottomans, same as the inferno’s depths.My heart burns for Sarchinar Creek.
Its source is muddied as eyes that have gone blind.
In early winter, the clothes of Sheikh Abbas became threadbare.
Ottomans are such ill-fate they harm people.
They brought sadness too the elderly tree of Pirmansur.
Shivering consumes it, head to foot.
The Turks, brutes, took branches from its tree and bashed
Every headstone, the fortresses of the dead.It’s like an eye without sorrow, Shiwi Awdar:
His eyes struggle to squeeze a single drop out.
Back then Kaniaskan belonged to the deer.
Now, full of Ottoman sounds and colors, it belongs to the asses.
Today, the place we played is clogged with looters.
From that field, from nowhere, someone sings, “Watch out.”
The incoherent Turks don’t hunt thieves at midnight—
They are thieves, harvesting blessings like fire.The city is filled with injustice, a place filled with mourning.
A place full of uproar, a country full of fight.
Its rooftop is full of scorpions, its walls full of snakes,
Its mazes full of looters and its desert full of dangers.My heart won’t let me tell you what has become of your room.
Spiders’ webs make the only curtain, inside or out.
No voice comes from its window except the whine of an owl.
The trails of ants are the only footsteps or paths.
For God’s sake, tell the majesty of Nali, I beg him,
When Sulaimani is so, walk past.
Salim is bone tired from being alone.
Let Nali not tire so.
I live this, but he shouldn’t waste his blood in sadness.
This land has no system without the proper owner.
If you intend to travel here, don’t.
6
The tongue’s speech and heart’s thought a head divided.
The eye’s headwaters and liver’s blood, bubble up, cup by cup.
Her sorrowing black hair, ring by ring, layer by layer,
Handful by handful, reaches her waist, searching for a belt.Her kiss gave me the happiness of happiness, but
The universe found its revenge. Before me is hell after hell.Oh, young heart. Never look at a beauty face to face.
Her eyelash’s arrow intends something with you. Be careful, careful.
Her full head of worries fell into my heart knot by knot
And showed me purity in her face: grief upon grief.The white body, the beloved’s letter, brings taste to the mouth, the mouth.
The morning messenger has Salim’s situation in his news, his news.
7
Silence your call and crow tonight, rooster!
Leave me to my beloved’s neck, to pleasure.
I won’t depart my sweetheart’s shores for the cry of poultry,
Not until the governor and timpani shout, announcing morning.My beloved’s glance is an arrow
Blooded by my liver and heart.The eyes order the glance, “Aim for the heart.”
The lip is an army.
The regiments of the eyelashes are disciplined as French legions.
My beloved’s hair softly obscures her breast
As the handle of a cane masks its burdens.I comb the illusion’s hair, describe its face,
I adorn the daughters of my thought.
Ascetic, go. You have no business advising me.
Friendship with frowning mullahs has dulled you.
Oh, backwards era, who can I tell about your cruelty?
You have a ruthless heart. You love oppression and anguish.
People these days don’t stand with art.
Seek hope Salim, in nothing.
You work for nothing.
8
Goodbye, oh power of the Babans, goodbye.
Goodbye, oh place of the dearest, goodbye.
I am ready for the city to be Shi’a.
Goodbye, oh people of faith, goodbye.
Like a Turcoman prisoner, they take me by force.
Goodbye, king of beauties, goodbye.
The plains of your departure are dark as a tar sea.
Goodbye, delightful sun, goodbye.
I go to the east, the property of Tehran.
Goodbye, oh Qibla of the soul, goodbye.
My tear is the color of a pomegranate’s flower.
Goodbye, oh pomegranate-breasted, goodbye.
Your arrival brought health, your departure illness.
Goodbye, affliction and medication, goodbye.
The heart across from your hair clearly says,
“Goodbye, groves of hyacinth, goodbye.”
The wounded heart remains thirsty for the arrow’s water.
Goodbye, arrow headed eyelashes, goodbye.
Though you are unconcerned about Salim’s situation,
Goodbye, non-Muslims, goodbye.
9
I say, “Let me quit your love for good,” then loyalty’s terms stop me.
Your injustice calls me to atheism, but fear of God stops me.
My heart wants your lip, not a cup.
You want this, too, but discretion stops you.
Your arrival is a sublime garden to the nightingale.
In your face, loyalty blooms, but anguish, a thorn, stops it.
The heart’s dark field is brightened, Salim, delighted by him:
Yes, atheism’s darkness only the lantern of Mustafa can stop.
10
Let the heart be ruined, as it ruined me.
Let God take my eyes, as honor took me.
As long as I live, I seed thistles in my heart, hoping
When I die, if you visit my grave, they will catch your hem.I see the eyelashes of ants, as if in a microscope.
I study your hair that closely with my heart.
The frigid arc of your love changed me:
In the road, others bat me around, a ball.
When my body dams my heart, where can sorrow flow?
I am a bridge for your cruel caravan to cross the waters.
My moon spoke in Farsi, “Salim, how are you?”
I said, “My body! I don’t speak your language. I’m a Kurd.”
11
I asked my lover questions, to examine her.
She disclosed every hidden meaning.
I tell her, My tears planted hair in my eyes.
She says, No, what clouds your vision is my hair, grown to my waist.
I drew a zero.
She bit her lip then said, “More comes by measurement.
That nothing is an open mouth.”She says, “What is such a delight that you want it always?”
I say, “Your face.”
She tells me, “What comes to your eyes?”
I say, “Garden of Heaven.”
I say, “The bellybutton holds musk.”
She says, “No, it’s my hair.”
I say, “You are tall as the boxwood.”
She says, “No, a swaying cedar.”
I say, “The flower has scent.”
She says, “No, my embrace.”
I say, “The sugarcane gives nectar.”
She says, “No, the smile.”
Still we argue about the name of her eyelash and eyebrow.
I say, “Sword and dagger.”
She says, “Arrow and arch.”
She says, “How are you?”
I say, “I have run out of patience.”
She says, “So, what do we do?”
I say, “Secretly marry.”
The word “marriage” in my mouth stopped the conversation.
“Salim,” she told me, “Bite your rude tongue.”
12
They differ: the explanations of my beloved and me.
The death of me is her life.
Her accusation: my testimony.
The fire of sorrow has dried my bloody envelope.
My heart is her hearth.
Far from her, I am cinder.
On arrival, joy and pain stand in the same line.
My heart is her tulip.
Her eyes, my daffodil.
I am deprived of wide paradise, its fruit and blessings.
My date palm is her height.
Her kiss is my firstborn.
Water and fish are as body and soul: connected.
My head is her shadow.
The dust of her path is my head.
Oh what calm sleep in my beloved’s embrace.
My hand is her neck, her arm is my pillow.
Her glance creates two worlds: dark and light.
My face is her night.
Her neck is my jewel.
I don’t want joy for myself.
The joy of my darling is enough.
Her joy is my sorrow.
Her splendor is my essence.
I got revenge on separation by arriving.
My face is her bitterness.
Her harshness is my sugar.
Kill me so long as she is ready to arrive.
My lip is her kiss.
Her dagger is my throat.
The inferno is as far from Eram gardens, Salim, as you are from each other.
My scent is her hell.
Her kiss is my kawthar.
13
If the date palm of my intended is without fruit,
What do I care if all the world’s gardens fruit?Stalker, if my beloved gives me a kiss
What is it to you, its honey and sugar?When my own head is bare
What do I care about a king’s jeweled crown?Stalker, when the heart-thief comes gently to me
What is it to you if she stays all evening into the morning?When I have nothing, even slave rags,
What do I care if the rich are belted in gold?Hey, stalker! If luck became my lover
What is it to you if I wear the robes of a king?If I sit in a corner with my beloved,
Why do I care if the universe turns inside out?Al-Harith, the Giver, if He gives,
What is it to you if he gives a hundred times more?If she kicks me out,
What do rooms of gold have to do with me?When Salim, the country’s eagle, comes to me,
What does it have to do with you, with the stalker’s dust on your head?
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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