0.4.9
It falls like the wind in the valley when
Stirred up, and wears the mountain peak down to a bump.
It is the best of levelers for any who has found no humming top
Among Fate’s toys and games to please him.
If you recite it, the beauty of its sound, like a gazelle calling to its young, will delight you
And if you seek to drown it out with your talk, it will give out a
musical sound to which you will have no choice but to hearken.
In it you will find a winter refuge in the cold; then,
When the burning wind of summer gusts, a summer resort.
0.4.10
If you grow tired of food and other things,
You will find in it relief for your boredom
And if you acquire a garden, plant there
Little words from it that will give you yet more posies
That will relieve you of having to erect a scarecrow in it;
Should even Shiẓāẓ23 come to steal them, he’ll be affrighted.
I guarantee24 you will find it so absorbing that you will lose all interest in sex,
But no one thereafter will think you’re strait-laced or no longer able—
No indeed! — nor that you’re one who doesn’t want to sleep or is kept awake
By insomnia, or because he suffers thirst or hunger.
0.4.11
Make not bold to mount life’s challenges
Unless you are ready to take them as your companion and pillion rider,
So that, should you be shaken in your seat, it may protect
You from slipping and so missing… summation.25
Well I know, and common sense instructs me,
That Your Honored Self finds monks frightening.
Scare them yourself, then, using every cutting character26
That’s in it inscribed, and any monk will pull back from you blinded.27
It is sour grape juice in the eye of its calumniator,
Whose eye, if its title is ever mentioned, will weep and weep.
It is the sharp cutting steel that
Slices bones and cleaves cartilage.
0.4.12
If you wish to dress yourself in it, despite its shortcomings,
Then enjoy it; if not, then leave it be, still clean.
I have licensed you to swallow it whole or to lick it
Or, if afraid of vomiting, to take it diluted.
Beware, though, lest you add to it or
Think of using it in abbreviated form,
For no place in it is susceptible
To abbreviation, or to addition, to make it better.
0.4.13
If an inanimate object may be fallen in love with for its beauty,
Then all humanity will be enamored of it.
After I have bidden mankind farewell,
They will find their way to it, wherever it be, in droves.
And if two liars quarrel, the hair of the beard
Of the more unjust will end up plucked out
And finally the hair on both their jawbones will be like
Mattress cotton, smooth and carded.
By the life of your head, my head knows that
I’ll never benefit from it by even a loaf—
No indeed! — nor cottage cheese, nor poor-quality dates,
Nor silk mixed with wool to hang on my peg, nor a cotton wad for my inkwell.
0.4.14
But on my pate I had an itch that spurred me
To practice writing, if only once,
Though he who is hired to compose a sermon for money,
Such a one is well suited to be considered a laborer of no worth.
Take of my words such as will find a market, and what you find
Counterfeit, leave for me in their wrappings.
The money changers are bound on occasion to find
Among the silver coins one that is of bad metal.
Many a gold coin will drag to you by his beard one whom you
May love, even if its face cannot be clearly read.
0.4.15
The old patina that you see thick
Upon it will not adhere to the glass of your mind.
He whose nature is refined, be he where he may,
Will believe what is gross in his beloved to be as refined as he.
Do not spurn what has gladdened you in him just because of what
Has hurt you. Nay, turn not your back on him in disgust.
The classifier is no classifier
If he doesn’t put things into classes.
Isn’t “of a certain stamp” the same in meaning as
“Of a certain type,” with the addition of the thwack of a stick?28
0.4.16
God forbid that you should judge me incoherently
Before you have properly studied it
And say, “The author has committed blasphemy, so gather,
You people — your friend has uttered unbelief,”
Causing the masters of the churches to rise up in dread
Outrage and unsheathe their swords against it.
The bonds of affection between you and me are such
As to cut short any accusations of my being either a sinner or a saint.
Raise not your hackles in preparation for a quarrel, or a complaint,
And let there be between us no dogfight.
0.4.17
If I have come with good intentions, you should acclaim
Me. If not, at least do not calumniate me.
Do not let my father, my mother, or my
Honor be insulted, and do not get used to doing so.
My sin is suspended, dangling, from my nose.
It does not strike the noses of other mortals.29
Many a foul-tongued loud-mouth
Has become, when the chaste have become sinners, himself chaste,
And many a man of pure soul, if he visits a man who has a wife,
Becomes, if she smiles at him, a rascal.
0.4.18
One rabid for young girls with firm breasts infects none but himself
And his medicine’s a breast abreast of him that’s well-risen.
What blame can attach to one who gives to his brethren
Something more delicious than wine, something exquisite?
He spent the nights carefully crafting its details
While they were sleeping, snoring loudly as they did so.
Did you ever see a noble man return a gift,
Humiliating the one who gave it to him with harsh words?
0.4.19
Could it not be that Fate has taken to playing the fool,
To raving and making jokes unfairly?
It derives kharif (“dotard”) from kharf al-janā (“the gathering in of the harvest”) and
From the ḥaṣaf (“mange”) that weakens the fingernails it derives ḥaṣīf (“man of clear judgment”).
Avoid making the lion frown, and be a brother
To the fox, a crafty fellow, of iron will.
He the sound of whose bow-string when plucked makes the sultan laugh
Is the one whom the people consider an expert.
My proem finishes with this line,
Which I have made as a roof to complete its construction.
Read nothing after this, even should you be
Charged with reading a single letter of any other book,
For then you’ll be on a slippery path, where you’ll go wrong foot first
And so slide across the line.
(Though I think that the scented air of my advice,
Like wind is in your ears — passing, leaving no trace, as though it were nought.)
BOOK ONE
CHAPTER 1. RAISING A STORM
30
1.1.1