After Medina, Mecca,
and Jerusalem, Baghdad
is the city of God
I love most dearly.

And why wouldn't I
love her, city of Peace.
There is my master and guide
in religion, thought, and faith.

There lives a girl
a daughter of Persia
with beckoning allure,
eyelids of languor.

With her gaze,
with her gaze, bringing
beauty, then grace,
then the most precious favor.

Full moon rising
in the dark of her hair.
Her eyes, black narcissus,
moisten the petals of the rose.

In her flowering
every beauty fades
and disappears. Her light
outshines the moon in splendor.

The touch of imagination
would wound her,
Rougher still
the gaze of the eye.

Shadow plays apparition--
recall her and she's gone--
too delicate to be
held by mind.

Words would describe her.
She rises always
just beyond and leaves
them stammering.

They'd catch her
in their net of words
but she slips past them
baffled, tracking after traces.

You who ride to find her,
let your camels graze
(though you cannot ever
graze the camels of intention)

Fall into her repose
and let her take you
beyond the boundary
of mortal being,

Unwilling to lavish
her nectared kiss
on some would-be lover
still stuck in the mire.

More beautiful than
gazelles, she is,
form beyond all form
and measure.

The sphere of light
revolves beneath her feet
Her crown glows beyond
the cosmic reaches.

For the corniced palace at Bagdhad!
(not the corniced palace in Sindad al-Hira)
Rising over gardens below like a crown,
a virgin unveiled in the most perfumed chamber.
The wind plays in the branches and they bend,
lovers at last coming together,
Her neck necklaced by the river Tigris,
her lord our master our Imam al-Hadi,
Nasir, Mansur, best of caliphs,
who never set out on horseback to war.
God bless him long as a dove
on a swaying bough coos,
Long as smiles flash forth lighting
(my eyes pouring down like clouds in answer)
From a bride like the sun when the mist parts
revealing herself in luminous splendor.

Fragrance of the east wind, bring the gazelles of Najd
this word, that I, as they have come to know me, am faithful.

Tell the belle of the tribe we'll meet in the early morning,
Saturday, in the Najdian hills

At the red rise near the ruined tower, to the right
of the flood beds and lonesome waymark.

If it is true, as you say it is, and she suffers
the same burning longing for me as I

For her, then we'll shade together from the noonday heat
in her tent, in secret, and fulfill the promise we made.

We'll tell of our longings, the hard trial,
the trance of desire, the ache, the fever.

Dream fragments? Signs from a sleep bright with promise?
Voice of a time that foretold my good fortune?

Perhaps the shepherd of wishes will lead them into open day
and their meadow grant me a gathering of roses.