Sakinama

O what a happy season this! O what a joyous time! The meadows are star-spangled with fresh flowers in spring’s prime.

Like partridge-wings the ground is pied with variegated flowers. How bountiful the waterfall! What diamonds it showers!

Of roses and of tulips what a riot meets the eye! The breezes frolicsomely roll on miles of greenery.

Have you seen mirrored in the stream the self-admiring bud? What fascinating beauty and what unabashed self-pride!

O what a mellifluous song, in what a lovely tune, from some bird hidden in a tree, singing as if alone!

The starling and the nightingale with song resuscitate the spirit in the body and old longings in the spirit.

From high-perched nests up in the trees the songsters’ warblings seem to cascade down and mingle with the babblings of the stream.

You would think God had graciously sent down His Paradise and placed it at a mountain’s foot for human ears and eyes.

To hear and see, in order to spare man the long suspense and agony of waiting till he’s ready to go hence.

What better things could I wish for in such a pleasure-garden than wine, a book, a lute and ah! A fair companion?

My life, O moon-faced saki, for a single gracious boon: Awaken in me memories of forebears long since gone.

Come pour into my empty glass the stuff which has no name, which lights the soul up like a lamp and burns it like a flame.

I pray to you make tulips grow from my exhausted clay and build a paradise from dust now mouldering away.

O don’t you know that east and west, from Kashghar to Kashan, there is going up one grand song replete with life’s elan?

The peoples’ eye has shed at last that purest of all tears whose magic can compel the rose to grow on prickly pears.

But oh! This poor Kashmiri who, in slavery born and bred, is busy carving idols from the tombstones of the dead.

His mind is blank and quite devoid of any higher thought; so ignorant of his own self and by self-shame distraught!

His master goes clad in fine silk, all woven with his sweat; but tatters, patches, rags and shreds are all his body’s lot.

There is not in his eye the light of vision that reveals, nor does there in his bosom beat the living heart that feels.

Come pour a drop upon him of your soul-enkindling wine, and from his smouldering ashes make a spark leap up and shine.