Layli and Majnun Read online

  Layli’s Beauty

  Loveliest of miracles, and beauty’s empress,

  Throughout the seven climes42 the prettiest temptress,

  More gorgeous in her natural loveliness

  Than seven caliphs’ ceremonial dress;

  The moon in heaven was envious of her face,

  Tall cypresses resented her slim grace,

  The instigator and destroyer of

  Men’s fearful hopes and hopeful fears of love,

  Heir to the sun and moon’s majestic light,

  The house’s lamp, the orchard’s torch at night,

  The idol idol-worshippers adore

  And which they piously bow down before,

  Bed-mate of love, and spouse of sweetest pleasure,

  At once love’s treasurer and shining treasure.

  A merchant dressed in silks, glittering with gold,

  Sugar and sweetness were the wares she sold,

  Decked in a thousand pearls, a thousand were

  Chained like Majnun by love’s despair to her;

  She was a miracle praised far and wide,

  The cynosure of all the countryside.

  *

  A wine glass in her hand, her rose-like face

  A bud that opened with a new-found grace . . .

  With her no slender cypress could compete,

  As for her lips, ripe dates were not so sweet,

  A garden of delight, whose countenance

  Lit fires of longing with each teasing glance—

  With half a glance her eyesight’s sorcery

  Ruined a hundred kingdoms instantly,

  With Persian, or with Arab, or with Turk

  Her teasing glances never failed to work.

  No one escaped her darts, her wondering stare

  Enticed her prey into her ringlets’ snare,

  The arrows of her eyes brought down her prey

  Like musk deer that successful hunters slay,

  Just as her curls were like a chain that bound

  The neck of any lion this huntress found.

  Her cheeks and lips together were perfection,

  Roses and honey mixed in one confection,43

  A thousand gave their hearts away, and chose

  To live in hopes they’d taste this honeyed rose.

  Her curls swept clean the entrance way for guests,

  Her lashes said, “Be off with you, you pests!”

  Her curls entreated guests to come, but then

  Her lashes’ daggers drove them off again.

  She was the queen in chess, whose moves defeated

  The rooks and pawns against whom she competed;

  Her stature was a cypress tree’s, her face

  A pheasant perched there in its topmost place.44

  Her sugared smiles were sweets that put to shame

  All other sweetmeats worthy of the name,

  Her little ruby lips suggested bliss

  That slighted sugar with their promised kiss,

  Her dimpled chin was like a lovely well

  In which a hundred hearts too rashly fell

  But then her hair let down was like a rope

  To lift them up again and give them hope.

  And yet despite her coy coquettishness

  She suffered to see others in distress . . .

  And stayed withdrawn and unapproachable,

  Behind her veil and irreproachable.

  She went up on the roof where, out of sight,

  She scanned the countryside from dawn to night,

  Hoping to see Majnun,45 and wondering whether

  They might, for just a moment, sit together,

  Uncertain which way she should look, unsure

  How she could tell him all she must endure;

  And fearing tattle-tales and dreading spies,

  Even at night she stifled her sad sighs—

  A trembling candle flame, half smiles, half weeping,

  Sweet smiles and bitter tears instead of sleeping,

  And all her outward suffering failed to show

  The inward agony she’d come to know.

  Grief’s mirror was before her, and displayed

  The image of her love her mind had made—

  Her shadow was her only courtier,

  Her veil her only friend to comfort her,

  And secrets whispered for her shadow’s sake

  Kept her and her dark shadow wide awake,

  While fire and water46 made up all her nature

  As though she were a flickering fairy creature.

  *

  As arrows are accoutrements of kings,

  A woman’s music’s when her spindle sings—

  But Layli in her sorrow now refused

  The double-headed spindle she had used

  And threw aside this homely spindle for

  An arrow emblematic of love’s war,

  Whose single head seeks out the mark it’s found

  Unlike a spindle spinning round and round.47

  Beneath her veil a sea of weeping drowned her,

  Grief had ingested her and swirled around her.

  Gold earrings in her ears, she laid her ear

  Against the doors for any news she’d hear,

  But kept her counsel still, not passing on

  The thoughts that haunted her to anyone.

  She sought the moonlight secretly at night,

  Watching the road with her unwavering sight,

  Wishing that she could send Majnun some kind

  And peaceful greeting from her gentle mind,

  Or waft from Najd a breeze’s soft caress

  Whose scent suggested loving faithfulness,

  Or send the clouds from Najd to mass above

  Majnun, and open there, and rain down love.

  *

  In every corner of her home she found

  Love poems lying randomly around,

  Each child come from the town’s bazaar would share

  Verses of love he’d heard repeated there,

  Each passer-by beneath her roof passed on

  A little verse of greeting, and was gone.

  Now charming Layli had a talent for

  Poetic meter, rhyme, and metaphor,

  This unpierced pearl strung pearls of verse as pure

  And virgin as herself, and as demure,48

  And as his poems had invoked her name,

  In answer to him she would do the same,

  Though where she’d heard his fire and seen it glowing

  She answered him with water gently flowing.

  In secret she took paper then and wrote

  In blood49 her verses as a little note,

  As if sweet jasmine sent, but stealthily,

  A poem-message to her cypress tree.

  Then from the roof where she kept watch she dropped

  This message in the road; soon someone stopped

  To pick it up and read it, and then dance

  As if with joy at this strange happenstance.

  He promptly took it to Majnun, whose strange

  Behavior had inspired this strange exchange,

  And who on reading Layli’s words at once

  Extemporized a poem in response—

  And this is how love-messages between

  This lovelorn pair passed safely and unseen.

  The songs of nightingales could not compete

  With their melodious songs, they were so sweet,

  And many lovely songs were based upon

  The lovers’ story, and the songs they’d sung,

  And harps, and lutes, and flutes, whatever tune


  They played, it spoke of Layli and Majnun—

  Their families’ children heard these compositions

  So often that they all became musicians!

  *

  They suffered from these slights, and wept to hear

  The way such gossip made them both appear;

  A year passed by, in which they had to be

  Content with dreams, and hope, and memory.

  A Description of Layli; Layli Visits a Palm Grove

  The sun’s rose drew its veil back, and its light

  Made all the roses of the lowlands bright,

  Like glittering coins a lucky man has won

  The blossoms on the fruit trees smiled and shone,

  And like a red and yellow flag unfurled

  Tulips and marigolds filled all the world.

  The orchards’ shade, the flower-filled gardens rang

  With endless trills their avian songsters sang;

  With dew the tender plants shone green and wet

  Like emeralds round which glistening pearls are set;

  Red tulips cast their petals, and you’d think

  Their centers were calligrapher’s black ink,

  The lowly violet’s scattered petals lay

  Like glossy curls50 let down in boisterous play.

  New buds grew strong, as if preparing for

  Their use as arrows in a threatened war,

  The rose’s armor was of silk, the breeze

  Lay soft and low to ambush enemies,

  And sunrise made the waterlily yield—

  Without a fight it cast away its shield.

  The box tree’s leaves51 were combed out by the breeze

  That loosened flowers from pomegranate trees,

  Curls of the perfumed hyacinth opened wide,

  The rose inquisitively sought her side—

  Narcissi blazed with fire, like one who seems

  To start up suddenly from feverish dreams,

  What looked like wine was drops of red rain blowing

  From Judas trees as if their blood were flowing,

  Jasmine seemed like a silver stream that spills

  As if to wash the golden daffodils,

  A timid rosebud opened up its eye

  Then looked away as if it felt too shy,

  A lily-of-the-valley seemed to sit

  Among its sword-like leaves defending it.

  In gardens songbirds sang, crows cawed and cried,

  Filling with noise and song the countryside,

  Hawks shrieked as if in love, a turtledove

  Salted their pain with murmured tales of love,

  Each ringdove high up in a plane tree cooed

  Stories of lovers longed for and pursued;

  And like Majnun himself, a nightingale

  Raised up its head to sigh its lovesick tale,

  While opening roses rose to shine and glitter

  Like Layli’s crowned head rising from a litter.

  Layli allowed herself to stray at ease

  Among the springtime’s lovely flowers and trees,

  Her plaited coils of hair seemed to bestow

  Upon each flower she passed their lustrous glow,

  And all the garden seemed to feast upon

  Her moist, sweet lips that like red rubies shone;

  She seemed a Turk52 in Arab lands, her face

  A Turk’s, her body with an Arab’s grace.

  *

  Surrounded by companions who’d protect her

  (And may the evil eye’s gaze not detect her),

  This houri53 went to see the garden’s green

  And shaded by a red rose sit unseen,

  To lift the jonquil’s goblet, to drink up

  The new red wine within a tulip’s cup,

  To make the violets jealous of her hair

  And roses weep in envious despair,

  To teach the cypress what is meant by height,

  And wash the lily’s whiteness with her white,

  To have the rosebuds pay their taxes to her,

  The garden’s wealth pay all the tribute due her;

  To have her shadow stretched across the grass

  Rival a palm tree’s in its slender mass,

  To smile to think her loveliness could be

  Compared to roses or a cypress tree . . .

  *

  But no, no, this was not her aim at all,

  To argue who was prettier or more tall—

  Rather, she sought a safe place where she could

  Sigh as those burnt in love’s infernos should,

  To tell the nightingales her secret pain,

  To go through all she’d suffered once again

  Hoping the breeze might bring some token of

  The stranger-friend to whom she’d pledged her love,

  Though doing this might mean that what had lain

  Secret within her heart would be made plain.

  *

  There was a grove of date palms near that place

  That had a Chinese painting’s winsome grace,

  Whose shady canopy and humming bees

  Evoked Eram’s enchanting paths and trees,54

  A place for pleasure, rest, and privacy,

  A special spot such as men rarely see.

  Gracefully, slowly, with a distracted air,

  Layli, with all her unwed friends, went there;

  She sat down on the grass, and seemed a rose

  That made the other bashful roses close,

  A budding lily opened where she sighed

  And other flowers grew graceful at her side,

  And where her hand caressed the grass, a new

  Tall box tree55 and a cypress sapling grew.

  Her cypress-slender, tulip-cheeked young friends

  Had come for all the pleasures springtime sends—

  They joked and frolicked there, but when their play

  Had tired them out, they laughed and went away,

  While Layli sat beneath a cypress tree;

  The grass on which she sat appeared to be

  A parrot’s bright green feathers; on this throne

  She seemed a gorgeous pheasant, all alone.

  *

  She wept, and in her secret weeping said,

  Gently and kindly, through the tears she shed,

  “O my loved friend, so faithful and so true,

  So worthy of me, as I am of you,

  O cypress among men, so young and bold,

  Whose heart is warm, whose anguished sighs are cold,

  Come to this garden now, take from my heart

  This brand that burns me since we’ve had to part,

  Sit with me here, my cypress, and I’ll be

  Beside you as your flowering cherry tree.

  But now each moment spectral fears arise,

  This garden is no garden in my eyes;

  How long is it to be before you’ll choose

  To send a message to me with your news?”

  Her words had hardly flown up in the air

  When she heard someone softly singing there,

  As if a passer-by sang both the tune

  And words of verses first sung by Majnun:

  “O my veiled idol, whom I hope will be

  Unveiled at last by no one else but me;

  Flailing in blood, Majnun sinks to perdition—

  And how does Layli fare? What’s her condition?

  Majnun is wracked with pain in every limb—

  Layli draws all his strength and will from him;

  Majnun’s pierced by love’s dart, the wound is deep—

  Lay
li lies sweetly, softly, sound asleep;

  Majnun laments, his cries are never done—

  Layli counts all her pleasures, one by one;

  Majnun is branded and he writhes in pain—

  Layli’s all flowers and springtime’s sweet refrain;

  Majnun is stricken by necessity—

  Layli is free, and laughs spontaneously;

  Majnun’s heart grieves that they must be apart—

  Layli is calm, all’s well within her heart.”

  When Layli heard this, she began to moan

  And weep, as if her tears would wear through stone.

  But then she saw, half hidden in the trees,

  One of her mischievous accomplices

  She’d thought of as a friend, but who’d betrayed her,

  Whose notion of what friendship was dismayed her.

  Once they were home, the pearl sought out her shell,56

  But she who’d learned her secret sped to tell

  The news to Layli’s mother, who resolved

  To find a way to have this problem solved.

  She fretted like a bird caught in a snare—

  What could be done? Her child was in despair,

  And to herself she said, “Majnun’s gone mad,

  If I do nothing she’ll be just as bad;

  But if I tell her to be patient, she

  Won’t listen and she’ll pay no heed to me—

  She’s been all patience since they’ve been apart

  And still she longs for him with all her heart.”

  Layli still suffered, shut up in her room,

  As faint as shadows in a litter’s gloom.

  Her sighs were choked, as if a fog possessed her,

  And sorrow like a hidden thorn distressed her;

  So Layli lived, heartsick, in love—and who

  In love escapes the grief that she went through?

  Ebn Salam Asks for Layli’s Hand in Marriage

  This garden’s gardener, poet-author of

  These words, brands with his speech this tale of love:

  *

  Layli, that moon who was so beautiful

  It seemed she was a moon that’s always full,

  Went one day to her garden, where her face

  Was like a rose that topped a sapling’s grace,

  And where her scent and beauty were so prized

  Both roses and their attar were despised,

  And as she walked her tumbling curls descended

  As though they were chained links that never ended.

  It happened that a dignified young man,

  A member of the Bani Asad clan,

  As he was passing by caught sight of her

  And thought no blossom could be lovelier.