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