Observations placeholder

Ibn El-Arabi - The Tarjuman al-Ashwaq, tr. Reynold A. Nicholson, [1911]

My lovesickness is from her of the lovesick eyelids: console me by the mention of her, console me
The grey doves fluttered in the meadows and wailed: the grief of these doves is from that which grieved me.
May my father be the ransom of a tender playful girl, one of the maidens guarded in howdahs, advancing swayingly among the married women!
She rose, plain to see, like a sun, and when she vanished she shone in the horizon of my heart.
O ruined abodes at Ráma! How many fair damsels with swelling breasts have they beheld!
May my father and I myself be the ransom of a God-nurtured gazelle which pastures between my ribs in safety!
The fire thereof in that place is light: thus is the light the quencher of the fires.
O my two friends, bend my reins aside that I may see the form of her abode with clear vision.
And when ye reach the abode, descend, and there, my two companions, weep for me,
And stop with me a little while at the ruins, that we may endeavour to weep, nay, that I may weep indeed because of that which befell me.
Passion shoots me without arrows, passion slays me without a spear.
Tell me, will ye weep with me when I weep beside her? Help me, oh help me to weep!
And rehearse to me the tale of Hind and Lubná and Sulaymá and Zaynab and ‘Inán!
Then tell me further of Ḥájir and Zarúd, give me news of the pastures of the gazelles!
And mourn for me with the poetry of Qays and Lubná, and with Mayya and the afflicted Ghaylán!
Long have I yearned for a tender maiden, endowed with prose and verse, having a pulpit, eloquent,
One of the princesses from the land of Persia, front the most glorious of cities, from Isfahan.
She is the daughter of ‘Iráq, the daughter of my Imám, and I am her opposite, a child of Yemen.
O my lords, have ye seen or heard that two opposites are ever united?
Had you seen us at Ráma proffering each other cups of passion without fingers,
Whilst passion caused sweet and joyous words to be uttered between us without a tongue,
You would have seen a state in which the understanding disappears—Yemen and ‘Iráq embracing together.
Falsely spoke the poet who said before my time (and he has pelted me with the stones of his understanding),
'O thou who givest the Pleiades in marriage to Suhayl, God bless thee! how should they meet?
The Pleiades are in the north whenever they rise, and Suhayl whenever he rises is in the south.'