He gave Majnun her message, then displayed
The gifts he’d brought, the silks and fine brocade.
Majnun for joy jumped up and whirled around,
Then sat down suddenly upon the ground—
He did this seven times, each time as though
A compass showed him how and where to go,
And in his turning joy it seemed he whirled
Beyond the seven heavens of the world,160
Then bowed so low as if he sought to trace
The contours of the earth’s elusive face.
As for the clothes Zayd brought, he thanked him for them,
And reverently he kissed them then and wore them,
But as he gently handled them, he caught
The scent of Layli in the gifts Zayd brought,
Which touched his troubled, wondering heart, and then
He grieved they were so far apart again.
Once more he set off singing, and the sound
Was like sweet sugar scattered on the ground;
Behind him like a motley regiment
His animals went everywhere he went,
And when he sat, they sat down too, and made
A circle round him like a barricade,
Attentive as respectful watching warders,
Or army officers awaiting orders.
This army, whose fierce armaments were claws
As sharp as sword blades, and devouring jaws,
Came close to Layli’s home. To speak to her
Zayd was sent forward as a messenger.
He said, “Your friend, Majnun, is at your door
As lowly as the dust he bows before,
Prostrate, he pleads now for permission to
Enter your home and humbly speak to you.”
Layli sprang up, no longer bowed and bent
But straight as is the pole that holds a tent;
As tense now with imaginings and hopes
As are a tent’s securely tightened ropes,
She ran out from her tent, like someone drink
Had undermined so much she cannot think,
And neither horrified nor petrified
By all the animals she saw outside,
She fell before her traveler’s feet, as meek
As grass before a box tree,161 and as weak.
Majnun saw that his very soul was there
Bowed down before his feet as if in prayer,
And split the heavens with an anguished yell
As on the earth beside her he too fell;
She’d given up her soul and lived, while he
Had gained his soul and died there instantly—
Both lovers had lost consciousness, and they
Were deaf to all the world might sing or say.
The animals came forward to defend
With sharpened claws their master and their friend,
And round them, like a mountain chain, they kept
The lovers safe while all their senses slept;
There were so many guardians gathered there
No passer-by could see the shielded pair,
And one or two of those who ventured near
Were killed, while others fled away in fear.
*
Unconscious, side by side, these lovers lay
Unmoving on the earth until midday.
Zayd came, and sprinkled rosewater to make them
Stir to a semi-conscious state then wake them,
At last they woke, exchanging wondering looks
As silent as the pictures are in books.
*
Then Layli with a thousand hesitations,
A thousand silent, shame-faced, protestations,
Reached for his hand, and hand in hand they went
Into the dark seclusion of her tent
Where with a hundred gestures she caressed him
And as her soul’s sole longed-for lover blessed him.
Now the belovèd sat beside her lover,
Zayd’s function as a go-between was over—
He sat among the animals who made
Around the tent a sheltering palisade,
Which was so closely wrought that if a fly
Alighted there or simply flew nearby,
One of the animals was sure to catch it
And then another’d speedily dispatch it,
And fearing certain death no man would dare
To be caught passing by or loitering there.
*
Their love was true and real, untouched by lust,
By worldly provocations and mistrust,
And its perfection was what rendered all
Majnun’s wild animals so tractable;
There was no animal in him, no taint
Of what’s unclean, no bestial constraint,
And conquered by his uncorrupted soul
His animals acknowledged his control—
There was no doubt these lovers’ probity
Sought only chastity and purity.
Only today I heard their lovelorn cries
And gazed myself into their loving eyes—
One goblet held the wine that neither drank162
(Tipsy, one fell: and drunk, the other sank),
When they embraced she fell back in a swoon
As consciousness departed from Majnun.
Their love was not a cursory concern
But something rare from which the world should learn,
A paradigm sad lovers everywhere
Should emulate to drive away despair.
Majnun, her lover, was her treasurer
Who’d safeguard her virginity for her,
While Layli’s gifts to him were portions of
Herself to show the nature of her love;
Her curls to be his kerchief, and her arm
To be his necklace keeping him from harm,
She fashioned from the ringlets of her hair
A garment for her silent slave to wear,
And in the court he ruled, her heart became
The chamberlain safeguarding his good name,
While for a baldric she clung close and pressed
Her pliant arm across his naked chest,
So tightly clasping him that seeing them
You’d say they were two roses on one stem.
Her glances bound him to her, but a chain
Like this will make no wounds and cause no pain;
Likewise she made him drunk, although she gave him
No heady wine or kisses to enslave him.
They were two semicircles that defined
A single circle163 when they were aligned:
Birds have two wings and scales two pans, there’s no
Perplexing mystery that this is so,
Two candles melt into a single bowl
And so become one body and one soul,
One source can fill two flasks, two strands are spun—
Then in a rope they’re twisted into one,
A head has two deep sockets, where we find
Two eyes that see, or are closed up and blind;
Earth has two poles, two mirrors can display
The single source that brings the break of day,
And these two lovers were entwined as light
And dark produced alternate day and night
While self-regard, that savage bird of prey,
From these two selfless souls had flown away;
Now they were one, that like a falcon flew,
A single entity that had been two.
*
Then like a sultan and his quee
n, the pair
Came from her tent into the open air.
The king had left his castle and his throne,
Ready to set out once again alone,
And in the empty streets he saw no one
(Since in his eyes all other sights had gone)
But Layli, and as if he could devise
Some way of drawing her into his eyes,
He seemed to be a sentinel whose stare
Would silently forever hold her there,
As if she’d be the queen within his heart
So that the two of them should never part.
In silence their lips met; it was as though
A heart-delighting wind began to blow
From Eram’s garden,164 and to fan the fire
That flared up with intensified desire,
And everywhere love’s gratifying scent
Of burning rue165 filled all the firmament.
They stood stock still, and made no sound at all,
Like painted frescoes on a palace wall,
Their hearts were full, but they said not a word,
Like nightingales whose song cannot be heard
(The world re-echoed with their love, but scorn
Had made it silent, hidden, and forlorn).
They stood till night, then till the morning came,
A candle burning with its steady flame
(Chatter is useless, it’s mere verbal violence,
And knowledge’s true signature is silence;
When it contains no gold, a treasury
Can stay unlocked for everyone to see,
But when gold’s there, the owner wants to hide it,
He locks it then, and no one sees inside it).
Teasingly Layli said, “My love, why is it
Your tongue can’t make your love for me explicit?
A songbird like a nightingale stays dumb
Until it sees the summer’s roses come,
And then it sings its songs of lovesick praise
And shows its love a thousand different ways—
You are this garden’s nightingale, and I’m
The rose you sang to once upon a time;
Today we are as one, what’s gone amiss
That you should seal your jewel-case up like this?”166
*
Majnun replied, “Your lips are sugar-cane,
Sealing my lips like an unyielding chain;
Think that I have no tongue, that its despair
Has shrunk it to the thickness of a hair,
That seeing your dear face has made it moan
As if it had no language of its own—
These moans cut off my speech, they’re my excuse
For why my tongue-tied tongue is of no use,
And I belong to you, it would be wrong
For me to stand and chatter all day long!
Tongues wound . . . better to offer silent balm
That makes uneasy hearts grow soothed and calm.
A speaker is a man who’s drowned in seeking,
And when the goal is reached what use is speaking?
You’re what I’ve found, and finding you I fell,
And now I’m lost in love’s unfathomed well.
You are my being now, and I have none,
You are my strength, and I’m not anyone.
Who am I in myself? Men know me as
The lowly shadow lovely Layli has—
I think of me as nothing; I compare
Myself with no one, since there’s no one there,
And you should understand that all you see
In me’s a trace of you, it isn’t me.
When as a falcon I flew high above
The world to hunt for that sweet partridge love,
I never saw a single trace of it;
Now that my wings are broken and unfit
For soaring flight, I see that partridge fly
Before me in the vastness of the sky.
While my small sparrow-hawk is flying round,
The peacock that is you cannot be found;
The king’s dog went to hunt for deer, instead
It was the deer that left the king for dead.
Ah, how I longed for you, and now we’ve met
It is the self I was that I forget.
If someone’s heart’s entirely yours, when you
Depart this life, he has to do so too;
My soul is something that I gladly give
Into your hands since it’s for you I live,
And all the time that I’m without you, I
Renounce my body and prepare to die,
And as your friend I’ll teach you how to make
Your soul a sacrifice for friendship’s sake.
As seas are to a fish, you are to me,
Burn me, and still I shan’t desert this sea,
You’re both my eyes, and how can eyes be far
From someone whose two watchful eyes they are?
How can I leave you then? O God forfend
That I should ever have to leave my friend!
For us, there is no me, there is no you,
In our religion there can be no ‘two,’
We are one cloth that makes two shifts, one soul
In two parts that together make a whole,
Or I’ve no being, and I’m your creation,
A shadow thrown by your imagination;
Since I am you, why should two forms appear,
And who’s to be the judge of who is here?
We’re like two separate letters that are bound
Together and so make a single sound;
I’m here, you’re there, yet we are one, and all
That isn’t you is dusty and contemptible,
And we’re so mixed and mingled we belong
Together like two voices in one song,
And if we’re ripped apart the song will be
A tuneless chaos, a cacophony—
We’re two sides of a shell, within us lies
A single pearl that’s hidden from men’s eyes.
Would that we were one body now, one whole,
A single body with a single soul—
Two edges on one sword, two kernels in
An almond underneath its second skin,
A duck egg with two yolks, a single letter
Repeated, making one sound, as in ‘better,’
Two letters in one name, two drops of wine
Within a glass that flawlessly combine.”
*
Majnun then wept a thousand tears that poured
Like tribute scattered from a hidden hoard,
While Layli wept an agate necklace of
Tears of intemperate, devoted love—
Her mouth as tiny as a perfume jar
That scented musky curls as black as tar;
The perfume jar spilled sugar, while her face
Mingled a rose’s and a full moon’s grace.
As though it were sweet scent and sugar she
Poured on her lover’s head perpetually,
She wept such sweetness and such fragrances
It seemed all Egypt’s fabled storehouses
And all of Africa’s must have been taxed,
And every last provider been ransacked,
To bring the scents and sugar for her sighs
And all the tears that overflowed her eyes.
*
From watching her Majnun grew sick at heart
And in his anguish tore his clothes apart,
Losing all self-control, he couldn’t think
But fell, like someone
overcome by drink—
Regret had purified his soul, but still
He felt torn open by his restless will
That cut him to the bone, as if a knife
Would strike into his soul and take his life.
He howled, and ran across the plains as though
Snatching his head back from an axman’s blow,
And with his animals around him sought
For refuge, though still weeping and distraught.
His love had taught another way to him,
That was as yet uncertain still, and dim,
Within her curls he had forgotten who
His self was as he’d felt himself renew,
And seen that “I’m her lover” must be wrong
In love where thoughts of self do not belong.
He’d torn himself away, as if to tear
A page from one with which it made a pair,
While Layli was the facing page that stayed
Unblemished by the tear that he had made.
*
Seeing such springtime made Majnun far more
Filled with desire than he had been before,
And he proclaimed her presence in each song
Praising love’s tryst, for which he’d longed so long.
He sang of loyal love, of a fruit’s skin
That peeled away reveals the pith within,
And Zayd was like an eager slave who heard
And noted down his master’s every word,
And cried, “Bravo! Your poems are so clever
That you and they deserve to live forever!
How wonderfully you venerate pure love—
Your poems are like prayers to God above!”
*
Love without chastity and abstinence
Is not love, it’s licentious violence;
Love is the mirror of celestial light
And is untouched by sensual appetite,
Love that is sensual craving cannot last,
It’s fleeting, in a moment it has passed.
To love is to be pure, forsaking lust
And resurrected from our earthly dust,
This is what true love is, this is the Way,
And love that’s not this leads mankind astray;
When love is real and true, it’s like a name
Stamped on the noble currency of fame.
So Nezami has spoken, and this sentence
Contains the substance of his own repentance.
A Description of Autumn; the Death of Layli
When autumn leaves are falling, it’s as though
Blood drips in droplets on the earth below,
The blood within each branch swells up until
Through scented apertures it starts to spill;
Layli and Majnun Page 22