***
Life must have a lodestar, dear - your love's the only for me,
The light that gleams in your sweet face - the only sun that shines for me.

Shall I - about the heartache sore in every vein I have - complain?
No, nor seek relief at all: my pain becomes a salve for me.

This earth I picked up near your door, for all the world I would not trade -
From earth one foot of yours has trod - a Solomon's temple built could be.

The radiance of your face once seen, the moon's a wan and worthless thing -
Your praises ever on my lips might truly Koran verses be.

O Hatai! Love's torments are a sign to show that you love true -
And torments from a loved one's absence - Heaven's blessings, you'll agree.

               ***
My heart loitered in a temple of idols - idolater became;
Urgent the nightingale's singing - but I know the promise he proclaims.

I razed the temple of my being to ashes - all over first love;
O only among the ruins the young lover may nurse his flame.

They are thirsting for my blood - your inebriate, languorous eyes:
Your brows where these inebriates couch - altar for each devotee.

Joseph the Chaste to the dimples that dance in your cheeks
would succumb -
Caught in the net of your curls, would awake where only madmen be.

"O Hatai, where is your bed, your turban?" ask the Hermit, stern -
I gave them as a pledge for wine - my sorrows only tavern see.

               ***
Your face, the full moon, are the same - or are they not?
Temptation-like, your curls enflame - or they do not?

Her beauty, o unhappy me, her graces - all
The riches of our age proclaim - or do they not?

Your silken lashes and your browns, like crescents, are
As this as bowstrings, so you claim - or do you not?

When the ascetic curses the your lover, are
His curses foul blows and shame - or are they not?

Hatai, when he weeps on leaving you, then have
His tears a river's semblance - or have they not?

Translated by Gladys Evans