The Sword of Ambition by ʿUthmān ibn Ibrāhīm al-Nābulusī

Author:ʿUthmān ibn Ibrāhīm al-Nābulusī
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: NYU Press
Published: 2019-02-14T16:00:00+00:00

THE THIRD SECTION: EXAMPLES OF THE POETRY PRODUCED BY THE MOST EXCELLENT SECRETARIES, THOUGH IT BE BUT A SINGLE LINE EACH

3.3.1

By Khālid ibn Barmak the Secretary:

Down to sleep you went, not pitying the wakeful one;

how endless the lover’s night!

After sleep had gone you did not know

what tears had done to the eye.187

He also composed the following lines:

I sought union with her, pitifully humble,

as my silvering head signaled her, “Don’t!”188

3.3.2

By Yaʿqūb ibn Dāwūd, vizier to al-Mahdī:

Gray hair has stolen my vehemence and my passion

and loosed from my eyelids a flowing torrent.

Much as I strove to conceal its

form from my sight, my wish was unattainable;

What grayness had colored, I colored too,

though my color did not last, Time’s did.

May the strutting time of youth that I quitted

many long years past not draw far off.

Those days I had of it were as nothing

but a fleeting dream in the night.189

3.3.3

By al-Faḍl ibn al-Rabīʿ:

Can you not see the day’s lovely qualities:

sun and clouds, flashing lightning, peals of thunder?

It is much like you, my peerless one—

sweet union and desertion, bringing me near and pushing me away.190

3.3.4

By Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Malik al-Zayyāt:

So many nights, drawn longer than the sigh of a lover,

have I rent with sobbing.

So many breezes, more delicious than union with the beloved,

have I exchanged for a sore reproach.191

The following lines are by him, too:192

She it is who said, as the wine

had begun to escape from her cheeks,

“Eat your heart out! Have you seen such a moon

in the side of which there glows an ember?”193

3.3.5

By Ibrāhīm ibn al-ʿAbbās al-Ṣūlī:

He shunned me, trusting in rumor,

following those who slander and reproach.

Can it still be a month for shunning lovers

when I spy the gleaming crescent upon his face?194

He also said,

By my soul and my kin, the most enchanting glance is the most languid,

the eyelids and the hollow ’round them held just so.

With my cheek touching his, it is as though

I were touching him in my heart and in the depths of my body.195

He once sent the following poem to Ibn al-Zayyāt on a rainy day:

These ceaseless storms make clear

the excuse for my delay attending you.

Yet the wonted greeting do I give: God’s peace,

on this as on all days, be upon the lord of all viziers!

I know not what to blame, or how to protest

the sky that keeps me from that other generous sky.

I only know to pray that one grow bright and clear

and the other’s rain clouds not depart.196

3.3.6

By Abū l-ʿAbbās Aḥmad ibn al-Rūmī the Secretary:

A garden of roses, all entwined in lush narcissus

that surround the blooming chamomile.

The one seems to us like cheeks, the other

eyes resembles, the last a row of teeth.197

3.3.7

By Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn al-ʿAbbās:

Love has afflicted the one who desires you

so treat him with utmost kindness;

Do not be rough, give him his due,

for none will ever love you so.198

3.3.8

By Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn al-ʿAbbās:

A sun, whose approach makes plain

that the sun itself need not trouble to rise,

You grow, despite your years, in brightness and in beauty

as wine grows more delicate in its old age.199

3.3.9

By Aḥmad

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