Ahmad al-Shidyaq - Leg over Leg - Volumes Three and Four

May the Good Lord make my mind happy one day through union with you!

May the Good Lord make your mind happy as long as you live!

Why give me the cold shoulder, when I have done you no wrong,

And my heart from your love has never turned?

By Him who has granted you everything you want,

Let me kiss, if but once, the hem of your robe!

I have no more stamina to bear your rejection

And this longing of mine has lost patience with you.

I have no desire for any but you

And will my eye ever behold your like?

You deprived my eye of sleep by night

And I said, “I am content, hoping that he will be too.”

I wonder, is your rejection of me imposed upon you?

But who, O Rashā, can have given you a ruling to kill me?

I implore you (and may God obtain for me my solace!)

Be a companion to me, O hoped-for one!

What you can see of my thinness is enough,

May the Lord of the Throne protect you from such a thing!

3.2.42

A

NOTHER

O Moon, tell me,

This abandonment of me,

Were you seduced into it,

Or is it your own wish?

Grant me a tryst,

O ben tree branch!

You’ll be rewarded for it

Or for the intention at least.

All that is hoped for

Is to see you one day

For love has reached

A state of tribulation.

Fear no reprover

Among those who have misled you.

They are but commanders

To injury.

Grant me joy,

May God grant you the same,

You with the

Flirtatious eyelids!

I shall be made well,

May you be ever well,

For I suffer pains

In the innermost recesses of my soul.

You have risen above all mankind

By virtue of what you possess

Of tresses

Like a princess’s.

He desires,

That slave whom you’ve taken prisoner

With your coquetry,

A close proximity.

For how much longer this temporizing

Without a lover’s union?

It is not what’s desired,

This way of behaving.

These acts,

O You of the Mole,

O You Who Command Passion,

Are death for me.

You are the one desired

Among all mankind.

There is none who is your equal

Among humanity.

Where is Suʿād 36

Among the beauteous?

You are an angel

Or a houri.

3.2.43

A

NOTHER

Come hither, Moon!

You are my desire.

All have garnered acceptance

From you except for me.

O you who bewitched me

With your coyness as you strut,

And distressed me

As you passed with glance askance,

Your blooming countenance

Has filled me with longing

And my love has led me

To the point of death.

Whene’er I encounter you

Turning from me

I feel my love growing

But my body turns sick.

O dark-lipped one,

Till when will you show no consent?

Reward one who loves you

On whom you have imposed this emaciation.

Glory to Him

Who gave you this beauty unequaled!

(How many an ardent lover has he enchanted

Who has been brought low by his love!)

You are the beauteous,

And the longing in my heart increases,

Grief has weakened us

To the bone.

I have paid the cost

For this passion with the dire blows of love

That you might grant me my request,

But how unlikely is that fulfillment!

Will not some friend,

One who will see that I gain the rights

That love has decreed,

Help me attain my desire?

O Moon, do not

Listen to the reprover’s words

But observe loyalty.

Let it be enough that my ardor kills me!

You exceed all people

In beauty, so exceed them too in granting boons.

Bestow wine From thy mouth,

O you whose fruits are sweet!

3.2.44

A

NOTHER

If love’s ways confuse you,

Don’t open to it your door.

Don’t fill your days with it,

Lest it impose on you grief and care.

I came to passion without dissimulation

And drank of its cups one after another.

What I tasted of its bitter aloes

Induced me to taste no other flavor.

Passion has a point at which it starts

But you will not find its end.

It makes the suitor taste sleeplessness

And wears through the skin and the bone.

O you who have branded my heart

With the fiery mark of this coquetry and pride,

If you will not hear out my reproach,

To whom can I complain of my disease?

It has made an end of me, what I experience

Of longing that burns.

My soul and body have been given to ransom you

So be, for once, to me a peacemaker.

3.2.45

You have gone to excess in cold-shouldering me

And put love in charge of my affair.

And now, by God, I know not

If it be magic or a dream

That you might cure a sick man

Who seeks his well-being from you

And put out the fires of love.

So say, “Be extinguished!” and take whatever you wish.

The one whom you’ve made heartsick, O love,

Is patient now and has no heart

And tears are poured out for you

So that their water may be irrigated with your mouth.

3.2.46

A

NOTHER

My bird! None other!

I cannot do without him for an hour.

O people of goodwill,

Please scare off him who would scare it.

My tears pour forth

And the fire of my longing cannot be hidden.

I have a heart

That makes obeisance to love.

I am the one mad with love,

Going all day without the love of the well-proportioned,

My night spent in waking,

My eyes not closing for an hour.

I complain of my devotion

But you add only more rejection.

Take pity on a slave

Whose pains you have made diverse!

I have no patience

And how can I have patience, O moon,

When this coldness

Has hurt my greedy soul?

Rejection has gone too far

And nothing cures burning love

Like forgetting

But my soul is near to death.

Separation has shown me

The varieties of grief and demise

And my passion for the beauteous one

Is above my capacity to bear.

Continued rejection

Has reduced the wasted lover to indignity

And grace of form

Creates in him his desires.

3.2.47

A

NOTHER

Did my tribulation not continue,

You’d not be hearing my complaint

And he’d not know my weeping place—

He who abuses me in love.

You have multiplied your rejections of me,

You who fail to keep your promises to me.

You have not observed your pledges to me

And have not asked me how I fare.

You turned from me in pride

When to grant me union would have been proper.

I have quite run out of patience

From the excess of what has struck me.

You loaded me with heavy burdens

And were happy to think no more about me.

Tell me “Yes!” or “No no!”

For prevarication has worn me out.

You of unique beauty,

You full moon, make me well!

You have given my censurers reasons to gloat.

Have not my sufferings been enough?

3.2.48

Glory to Him who created

This most marvelous visage

And placed beauty in its entirety

In your bewitching eye.

Love is an abasement

That makes bodies grow thin.

No one would choose it

Did he not suffer from it.

My lord, O my lord!

O object of my desire!

Take unto you none but me

And do not forget me for another!

tazabbub (“chattering and salivating”) means “talking too much” (synonym tazbīb ) and tazabbaba famuhu means “the saliva collected in the sides of his mouth”; takassus means “affectedness.”