Bāghbān’s Lyric Selection

In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.

Verse Number 1:

Pro! Inquis, inquam: inceptum amor,

Let us unite night and day, sky and floor.

They tell me: Take love with a grain of salt,

But her flirts give salt and I yearn for more.

Break me open wine bearer, pour some here,

When from you far, I’m sober to the core.

Love is nor a game nor is it science,

Love is a God-sent scent, a holy law.

I am in love, this is my only sin,

Above, amity will come, I am sure.

Tonight is Yaldā, I’ve seen these before,

Every night of the year alone is war.

Hey Bāghbān, what a start for you madman!

Life sends me much pain and much forth in store.

~

Verse Number 2:

Such torment of tongues I've griefed,

Yet still by this English I'm heaped.

It is so that the tongue true keeps,

So I like an Anti-Christ seen.

Find home in blood or home in speech,

Find home in cities and towns you breached.

In blood in veins in many spades,

But still no home in homes shade.

Agonyed twenty years, estranged and greyed,

By something unseeable seen everyday.

Enough, peers peer to smile to pain,

Truly your loss unseen is unsane.

The ignorant ones, their graves a deep bed,

And life of peace, wherein preach is said.

If I seek and search until I'm dead,

The hope shall edge my heart till end.

By a means of grueling years unspent,

Home, where Persian's more than dreamt.

~

Verse Number 3:

By sun yearn for its death,

By its funeral its revival.

By swamps yearn for dry plains,

By sand for heavy imber.

By water yearn for wine,

By its drunk to be sober.

By youth yearn for age,

By dotage for adolescence.

Though by solitude yearn to court,

But by Love never yearn again.

~

Verse Number 4:

‘Fore I sleep I sing for you,

My children grown, then I awoke.

The sky above me simmered blue,

It boiled black, then I awoke.

As songbirds sung their song and flew,

Long after fell both soil and mute, then I awoke.

Starved of eye-shuts, so I layed for a few,

My eyes couldn’t shut again, then I awoke.

These verses I write, at night I slew,

For cantos descend, then I awoke.

O run and lay beside, stay in view,

To the corpse of my leman! then I awoke.

~

Verse Number 5:

These tided aetas,

How unto us's so calm,

Rising sun above the masses,

Heed the mirror in my palm.

When I raise my hand in prayer,

See God saveth you all,

From tides of flames here,

Seas of blood wouldn’t crawl.

~

Verse Number 6:

God! To my cry's He sloweth the caravan,

I'll be too spent to drive on the camel anon,

Lo it seems the merchants front and back can,

I, a weary cadaver, and soon done gone.

So this sore's scraped, by sand in sandals,

My leather hands ache, from rope and handle,

The rope I take, my palm in manacles,

I will heaven wake, if by falling ankles.

~

Verse Number 7:

Valley’t peak, peak’t valley, cloud fro top t’ bottom,

Chalice taketh me adrift engulfing dome of cotton,

Taketh me’t where me damsel's ‘n where’sh breathe,

It’s either up in here clouds or down in thrashing sea.

~

Verse Number 8:

Twain acacias yonside Kābul, yonder Hindu Slayer peaks stand,

From its cold streams drink, why dost thou dry out wanion land?

The waning moon shall only turn forth black and anew anon!

Glory maugre who shall rule or duel or pike or fight verily,

Thereupon once more its clouds shall line the grand Khorasān,

Fine fabrics, the nexus to dresses, for to sing and dance merrily,

Whither else is home to us? Who whom wists can resist this land?

Truly dearly, if thou knowest where home is bring it unto us in hand!

Say, my kind home, just one drink here is a thousand elsewhere,

O come on kill me in Kābul, it would be like to live to die here,

When I am far from you, my songs and poems have no salt,

Sedo at its skirts but heavy at its heart; this all akin to me,

Weep for thee fellest and I am sedent in the home of those at fault,

When once great Turks ruled, now see the students that be,

O Bāghbān, thou knowest these dreams shall never spell unto truth,

Save for in the arms of a Lover; and she too shares this sorrow in sooth.

(Though it’s peace I pray for, above all…)

~

Verse Number 9:

In the midst of this dole, my dole is all sour and pain,

But by you here, even this pale city is a garden of fame.

Even the withered flowers are fragrant here,

Even the land abstained from rain yields grain.

The source and fount of that is you, all you,

Your pain is the calming that keeps me sane.

Your brows pull me to singing pangs of harm,

My blood leaks dam-less, by a glance I am slain.

She takes hearts like the tide takes lives,

And she flirts coquettishly like a sweet refrain,

For many, your figure hauls them away from God,

Though I am hauled closer, and your lungs are my gain,

Bāghbān, we know who you love, but not who you hate?

The tunic that gets to touch her body is my disdain.

~

Verse Number 10:

Those black eyes on that white rind is enough,

Every blink and every rise will suffice as enough.

Planted feet to the market, your black eyes tend to me,

Slanted and bended with envy; your envy’s enough.

I love your envy and your madness, akin to mine,

When I am not treated right; your wrong is enough.

I see when you try, it is not unnoticed or out of mind,

My sacrifice for your sweat that dries; your strive is enough.

I die every time, in the prayer niche I pray for you,

By night when I lay for you; just your sleep is enough.

When you have nothing to speak beside me,

My love, just be; your breathing is enough.

Kind is your soul, but even if, my dove,

You hate me so, your seething is enough.

You are my basis to sleep and to eat,

I am strong so your weakness is enough.

My love, every part of you is enough,

The question is if Bāghbān is enough?

~

Verse Number 11:

Lover has hemmed my eyes shut from the day,

Like the nights I am blind so I search for her ray.

Last night I dreamt I was a sun in her sky,

I woke up as but a star so the dream was a lie.

Your musk lashes prick mountains but caress my heart,

Woe at every cascading blink of yours wherein we part.

~

Verse Number 12:

The pains that you deal are my soothing O Pars,

That pangs the self and lover, every poem I parse.

I treasured you in a Lover so deeply in the past,

But a blitz strifes within every time she does pass.

…As if you bless me with your curse.

If your Lover is mute to your soul then leave it,

I taught this advice, now I self cannot heed it.

If she drifts not to my soul will I turn and grieve it?

Soul, know there is no other chance, and I need it.

I think and think of her spring till winter’s closure…

I think she wishes nothing from me; well, I don’t have that,

I think I wish love from her; clearly, she doesn’t have that.

I think I wish she’d make me free; she doesn’t know to do that.

I think she wishes for fate’s spur; fate sees me not to do that.

…I’m more sure with her head than I am with my own.

Pain as when I pray for you my pleads are unreturned,

My only fault is loving you from which I’ll never learn.

I prostrate to God in her garden, beside rose and fern,

I beg of Him to open its gates, but He knows I’d return.

For example that I chase you portal through portal…

You drive forth this caravan, it is you that I follow,

Desert to desert, my heart flutters but yours is hollow.

I odyssey for the countenance you bear I hallow,

Unrequited and all I have faced is sorrow.

…For you aren’t here today, you live in my tomorrow.

The sky brought upon rain but I appeal for her,

To draw the mist and downpour forth revealing her.

May at home she be un-mute and I healing with her,

If her sun clears the rain, the clouds I steal for her.

…She is here night and day so she is moon and sun…

She is clueless and blind to what we clue and see,

The moon behind her is dwarfed and its light is weak.

The rings in her veil crowned around her lunar cheek,

The hoops on her ears paired her graceful skin of tea.

All I beg for is delivery, conclusion, finale…

I wish she’d confess her love or confess her hate,

I am too shy to confess and to face my fate.

How much longer can I pine my time in black wait,

I am my tongue, will I be loud or mute that date?

No attention she pays to her drunkard slave…

She is drunk off the world and I am drunk off her,

She has much to say about life; me, I only love her.

This ring that hangs off my ear shows I am of her,

Below her I suffer, and none but God is above her.

I picture in my mind her life with mine…

Picture us gathered, dressed and mannered sweet,

Picture the tossed petals that fall to our feet.

Picture coyness, picture new family to greet,

Picture a throne among all there, picture us in the seat.

…The picture is clear but so far from here.

Nor will I grow tired, nor crawl and go quiet,

In spite of that you don’t, to my love, requite.

Your gazes upon me seem like love, but not quite,

Without you I am in flight with no wings, nor kite.

Occasionally I see what my soul whilom planned…

On occasion I lose patience and my heart relocates,

If I forget and my Queen’s deposed, love will reinstate.

And it is not in my control if her I imitate,

Like a shadow to her vast tree myself I replicate.

This native soul is all I am, and it is all I have…

O woe to the world, that we are from the same land!

But that God did draw our tongues apart by His Hand.

You are not so far, I pass but mountain and sand,

By love, the world and culture occludes not our stand.

…The soul my heart, but I will love her lungless…

I will love that woman even if my lungs are taken,

I will serenade her even if my tongue is taken,

She is my wine if all of the grapes that hung are taken,

I will drink from her love and forth orders song is taken.

…And if we lost order in the world, I wouldn’t care…

I care not for the worlds order, for you are my master,

I care not for worldly desire, for you are my hereafter.

The world is already ill, and it ills and ills faster,

I too am ill, but I am healed by your laughter.

I take his trials, but not his beauty nor his piety…

God! Please send me to the Egyptian Nile like him,

I will not rise akin, still compared to these trials I win.

Akin the well, akin prison, akin the tempt of sin,

Love is my sin, without her I am without kin.

I am an ordinary pigeon in her Phoenix trap…

Great God! Must I be captive in her snare?

This cord budges not, this knife does not tear.

As I try and flee to the shore, the image I then bear,

Images of gladness, that flay me whole as I stare.

I once treasured the tongue I will now gladly cut…

Is blood thicker than the wine of her love?

Drip me empty and her wine is enough.

O come you, Bāghbān, be honest, don’t bluff:

I love you alone, by the One above…

.