Abu’ abdulla Ja’far bin Mahud Rudaki of Samarkand says:
All the teeth I ever had are worn down and fallen out.
They were not rotten teeth, they shone like a lamp,
a row of silvery-white pearls set in coral;
they were as the morning star and as drops of rain.
There are none left now, all of them wore out and fell out.
Was it ill-luck, ill-luck, a malign of conjunction?
It was no fault of stars, nor yet length of years.
I will tell you what it was: it was G-d’s decree.
The world is always like a round, rolling eye,
round and rolling since it existed: a cure for pain
and then again a pain that supplants the cure.
In a certain time it makes new things old,
in a certain time makes new what was worn threadbare.
Many a broken desert has been gay garden,
many gay gardens grow where there used to be desert.
What can you know, my blackhaired beauty,
what I was like in the old days
You tickle your lover with your curls.
The days are past when his face was good to look on,
the days are past when his hair was jet black.
Likewise, comeliness of guests and friends was dear,
but one dear guest will never return.
Many a beauty may you have marvelled at
but I was always marvelling at her beauty.
The days are past when she was glad and gay
and overflowing with mirth and I was afraid of losing her.
He paid, your lover, well and in counted coin
in any town where was a girl with round hard breasts,
and plenty of good girls had a fancy for him
and came by night but by day dare not
for dread of the husband and the jail.
Bright wine and sight of a gracious face,
dear it might cost, but always cheap to me.
My purse was my heart, my heart bursting with words,
and the title-page of my book was Love and Poetry.
Happy was I, not understanding grief,
any more than a meadow.
Silk-soft has poetry made many a heart
stone before and heavy as an anvil.
Eyes turned always towards little nimble curls,
ears turned always towards men wise in words,
neither household, wife, child nor a patron–
at ease of these trials and at rest!
Oh! my dear, you look at Radaki
but never saw him in the days when he was like that.
Never saw him when he used to go about
singing his songs as though he had a thousand.
the days are past when bold men sought his company,
the days are past when he managed affairs of princes,
the days are past when all wrote down his verses,
the days are past when he was the Poet of Khorassan.
Wherever there was a gentleman of renown
in his house had I silver and a mount.
From whomsoever some had greatness and gifts,
greatness and gifts had I from the house of Saman.
The Prince of Khorassan gave me forty thousand dirhems,
Prince Makan more by a fifth,
and eight thousand in all from his nobles
severally. That was the fine time!
When the Prince heard a fair phrase he gave, and his men,
each man of his nobles, as much as the Prince saw fit.
Times have changed. I have changed. Bring me my stick.
Now the beggar’s staff and wallet.
by Rudaki (c. 920) Period of the Rise of the Vernacular
Translated from the Persian by Basil Bunting
