By Jahan Malek Khatun

My heart will take no drug to dull this pain,

The seal of sorrow’s set, and will remain:

My heart could never tire of your sweet presence,

Absence is all my life can now contain.

                                      *

Look at this garden of the world

To see what it devises next

And whose fate, out of all out fates,

               The word revises next

To see just who it is who’ll drink 

The draught of Being that brings night,

And who will suffer here hungover

       In morning’s light

To see whose foot will step into

The snare that snapped shut means disaster,

On whose hand it bestows the jewels

               That make him master

To see whose lucky ears will hear

The noble psalms that David sang,

Whose bitter soul will be consumed

               By sorrow’s pang

To seem how many of our friends

It will at last consign to dust,

Counting off lovely girls as well,

              Since it needs must

To see whose garden grows with hope

Until it glitters tulip-red,

Whose rosebush bears no buds, but only

       Sharp thorns instead

To see how many changeless Fate

Throws down from thrones into the grave,

To see whose star of fortune now

               Begins to fade

                                     *

The rose have all gone; “Goodbye,” we say; we must;

And I shall leave the busy world one day; I must.

My little room, my books, my love, my sips of wine,

All these are dear to me, they’ll pass away; they must.

By Jahan Malek Khatun, translated by Dick Davis in Mirror of My Heart: A Thousand Years of Persian Poetry by Women (Penguin Books, 2021), reprinted by permission of Dick Davis