from Ibn al-`Arabi, Turjuman selections, translated by Michael Sells

Poem #20
In a Bad Way
translated 25 December 2003, 19 October 2004 (on, after after trip to Palo Alto)

I'm in a bad way, lost
in the languor of her eyes.
Call her to mind and heal me,
Memory of her’s my only cure.

Doves rustled in the green and cooed
sad the same sadness as I.

By my father's life! she's a girl
who knows to play, to walk proud among
the jeweled belles of the howdah,
proud among the ladies unadorned.

In my eyes like the sun she rose then set
aglow in the horizons of my heart.

Ruins in Ráma, faded now, what beauties
and what curves of the breasts you've seen!

By the life of my father, by my own,
A gazelle grazes inviolate within the curve of my ribs.

What burns for her there is light
and light extinguishes the burning fire.

Draw in the reins, two friends, turn aside,
that I may see the trace of her encampment,
see it with my own two eyes.

When you arrive where she rested, friends,
climb down from your camels
and grieve for me there.

Let me stay awhile before the ruins,
Let us begin to grieve, then let me
grieve for what broke me down.

Without arrow, love struck me down,
Without bow, she put me away.

Tell me, friends, will you help me,
help me, help me grieve?

Recall for me, friends, Hind and Lúbna,
Suláyma, Záynab, and Inán

Then tell of Hájir and Zarúd, cities
fated to ruin. Bring word
from the meadows of gazelles grazing.

Sing my loss with verse of Qays and Láyla
Máyya and her madman lover poet Ghaylán.

Long my longing for a girl well-composed,
Harmony in prose, verse, sermon and explanation,

for the daughter of kings, of Persian shahs,
of the city of cities, Isfahán,

For a daughter of Iraq, my master's child,
and I, a son of Yemen, her contrary.

Did you know, gentlemen, have you heard
that two contraries could ever join?

Had you only seen us in Ráma! exchanging,
without hands, wine cups of passion,

As love sang, without tongue,
a rapture song of love between us.

You'd have seen what melts reason,
Iraq and Yemen intertwined.

The poet, who long before me coined these verses, lied,
bashing me with the stones of his mind:

You who’d match Suháyl with the Pleiades
Tell me, God grant you long life, how can they conjoin?

She is in the Syrian East as she rises, while he,
Suháyl, rises south southwest in Yemen!