My Beloved, this torture and pain
I suffer because I am so addicted to Your Beauty.
People ask me whether I prefer Your
company to being in heaven.
Heedless fools, what would heaven itself mean
without the Friend’s Presence?
-Abu Sa’id Abu’l Khayr (trans. Vraje Abramian)
from Nobody Son of Nobody. Hohm Press, 2001
Selected Lyrics:
No hay nadie en este mundo
que te quiera más que yo
debajo tierra me meto
donde no me vea ni Dios
…
Yo no me he muerto de pena
porque no supe sentir
y a mi corto entendimiento
le agradezco al vivir
yo no me he muerto de pena
porque no supe sentir
Translation:
There’s no one in the world
who loves you more than me
I just want to go underground
where even God can’t see me
…
I have not died of grief
Because I could not feel
In my short-sightedness,l
I am grateful to live
I have not died of grief
Just because I could not feel
When she looks at me I burn
When she turns away I freeze
Gaze into her eyes to learn
The cause of my disease
Her beauty overwhelms me
I can’t look or turn away
This wine is fire from the sea
And lightning from the waves
Just one drop has left me blind
And her dark glance is an eclipse
Even angels run and hide
And earthquakes quiver on her lips
Her pupils have stolen my mind
Her smile makes the stars spin
But in her fatal face I find
Love’s flames are my true heaven
You keep dancing on my lips
Long, long after we have kissed
Is what I learn so far from you
worth what I forget of us?
What could I know beside your truth?
What’s all I earn beside your trust?
Heaven is to sit beside you
Your bedside’s where love quickens dust
Where the lips of dawn and dusk
Catch the moon and make her blush