PERSIA
TO HIS LOVE INSTEAD OF A PROMISED PICTURE-BOOK
The greater and the lesser ills:
He waved his grey hand wearily
Back to the anger of the sea,
Then forward to the blue of hills.
Out from the shattered barquenteen
The black frieze-coated sailors bore
Their dying despot to the shore
And wove a crazy palanquin.
They found a valley where the rain
Had worn the fern-wood to a paste
And tiny streams came down in haste
To eastward of the mountain chain.
And here was handiwork of Cretes,
And olives grew beside a stone,
And one slim phallos stood alone
Blasphemed at by the paroquets.
Hard by a wall of basalt bars
The night came like a settling bird,
And here he wept and slept and stirred
Faintly beneath the turning stars.
Then like a splash of saffron whey
That spills from out a bogwood bowl
Oozed from the mountain clefts the whole
Rich and reluctant light of day.
And when he neither moved nor spoke
And did not heed the morning call,
They laid him underneath the wall
And wrapped him in a purple cloak.
From the Modern Persian.
TOO SHORT A NIGHT
Lily of Streams lay by my side last night
And to my prayers gave answers of delight;
Day came before our fairy-tale was finished,
Because the tale was long, not short the night.
From the Persian of Abu-Said (978-1062).
[THE ROSES]
Roses are a wandering scent from heaven.
Rose-seller, why do you sell your roses?
For silver? But with the silver from your roses
What can you buy so precious as your roses?
From the Persian of Abu-Yshac (middle of the tenth century).
I ASKED MY LOVE
I asked my love: "Why do you make yourself so beautiful?"
"To please myself.
I am the eye, the mirror, and the loveliness;
The loved one and the lover and the love."
From the Persian of Abu-Said (978-1062).
A REQUEST
When I am cold and undesirous and my lids lie dead,
Come to watch by the body that loved you and say:
This is
Rondagui
, whom I killed and my heart regrets for ever.
From the Persian of Rondagui (tenth century).
SEE YOU HAVE DANCERS
See you have dancers and wine and a girl like one of the angels
(If they exist),
And find a clear stream singing near its birth and a bed of moss
(If moss exists),
For loving and singing to the dancers and drinking and forgetting hell
(If hell exists),
Because this is a pastime better than paradise
(If paradise exists).
From the Persian of Omar Khayyam (eleventh century).