The Luzumiyat

tears around thy bier,
Nor can it wash thy hands of shame and fear;
Ere thou departest with it freely part⁠—
Let others plead for thee and God will hear.

C

For me thy silks and feathers have no charm
The pillow I like best is my right arm;
The comforts of this passing show I spurn,
For Poverty can do the soul no harm.

CI

The guiding hand of Allah I can see
Upon my staff: of what use then is he
Who’d be the blind man’s guide? Thou silent oak,
No son of Eve shall walk with me and thee.

CII

My life’s the road on which I blindly speed:
My goal’s the grave on which I plant a reed
To shape my Hope, but soon the Hand unseen
Will strike, and lo! I’m but a sapless weed.

CIII55

O Rabbi, curse us not if we have been
Nursed in the shadow of the Gate of Sin
Built by thy hand⁠—yea, ev’n thine angels blink
When we are coming out and going in.

CIV56

And like the dead of Ind I do not fear
To go to thee in flames; the most austere
Angel of fire a softer tooth and tongue
Hath he than dreadful Munkar and Nakir.

CV57

Now, at this end of Adam’s line I stand
Holding my father’s life-curse in my hand,
Doing no one the wrong that he did me:⁠—
Ah, would that he were barren as the sand!

CVI58

Ay, thus thy children, though they sovereigns be,
When truth upon them dawns, will turn on thee,
Who cast them into life’s dark labyrinth
Where even old Azrael can not see.

CVII

And in the labyrinth both son and sire
Awhile will fan and fuel hatred’s fire;
Sparks of the log of evil are all men
Allwhere⁠—extinguished be the race entire!

CVIII

If miracles were wrought in ancient years,
Why not today, O Heaven-cradled seers?
The highway’s strewn with dead, the lepers weep,
If ye but knew⁠—if ye but saw their tears!

CIX

Fan thou a lisping fire and it will leap
In flames, but dost thou fan an ashy heap?
They would respond, indeed, whom thou dost call,
Were they not dead, alas! or dead asleep.

CX

The way of vice is open as the sky,
The way of virtue’s like the needle’s eye;
But whether here or there, the eager Soul
Has only two Companions⁠—Whence and Why.

CXI

Whence come, O firmament, thy myriad lights?
Whence comes thy sap, O vineyard of the heights?
Whence comes the perfume of the rose, and whence
The spirit-larva which the body blights?

CXII

Whence does the nettle get its bitter sting?
Whence do the honey bees their honey bring?
Whence our Companions, too⁠—our Whence and Why?
O Soul, I do not know a single thing!

CXIII

How many like us in the ages past
Have blindly soared, though like a pebble cast,
Seeking the veil of mystery to tear,
But fell accurst beneath the burning blast?

CXIV

Why try to con the book of earth and sky,
Why seek the truth which neither you nor I
Can grasp? But Death methinks the secret keeps,
And will impart it to us by and by.

CXV59

The Sultan, too, relinquishing his throne
Must wayfare through the darkening dust alone
Where neither crown nor kingdom be, and he,
Part of the Secret, here and there is blown.

CXVI60

To clay the mighty Sultan must return
And, chancing, help a praying slave to burn
His midnight oil before the face of Him,
Who of the Sultan makes an incense urn.

CXVII61

Turned to a cup, who once the sword of state
Held o’er the head of slave and potentate,
Is now held in the tippler’s trembling hand,
Or smashed upon the tavern-floor of Fate.

CXVIII62

For this I say, Be watchful of the Cage
Of chance; it opes alike to fool and sage;
Spy on the moment, for to-morrow’ll be,
Like yesterday, an obliterated page.

CXIX

Yea, kiss the rosy cheeks of new-born Day,
And hail eternity in every ray
Forming a halo round its infant head,
Illumining thy labyrinthine way.

CXX

But I, the thrice-imprisoned, try to troll
Strains of the song of night, which fill with dole
My blindness, my confinement, and my flesh⁠—
The sordid habitation of my soul.

CXXI

Howbeit, my inner vision heir shall be
To the increasing flames of mystery
Which may illumine yet my prisons all,
And crown the ever living hope of me.

Endnotes

1. In one of his poems he speaks of three prisons, his body being the third. Here is Professor Nicholson’s translation:

   Methink I am thrice-imprisoned⁠—ask not me
   Of news that need no telling⁠—
   By loss of sight, confinement in my house,
   And this vile body for my spirit’s dwelling.

   ↩

2. My learned friend, Count E. de Mulinen, called my attention to the work of Von Kremer on Abu al-ʻAlaʼ. And I have seen copies of a certain German Asiatic Review in which were published translations, made by that eminent Orientalist, of many poems from the Luzumiyat. He speaks of Abu al-ʻAlaʼ as one of the greatest moralists of all times, whose profound genius anticipated much that is commonly attributed to the so-called modern spirit of enlightenment.

   Professor D. S. Margoliouth has also translated into English the Letters of Abu’l-Ala, which were published with the Arabic text at the Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1898. Also Professor Raynold A. Nicholson, in his work, A Literary History of the Arabs, discusses the poet at length and renders into English some poems from the Luzumiyat. A work was published by Charles Carrington, Paris,