Fard

Love brings the tiny sweat into your hair
Like stars marching in the dead of night.

From the Hindustani of Mir Taqui (eighteenth century).

Edward Powys Mathers

Edward Powys Mathers was an English translator and poet, best known for translating the French Orientalist J.C. Mardrus's translation of 'The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night' in 1923. In addition to translations, Powys Mathers was an influential figure in the realm of cryptic crosswords, devising some of the most challenging puzzles for 'The Observer'. His translations have been lauded for their literary beauty and for introducing English-speaking audiences to classic Persian, Arabic, and Turkish poetry.

Edward Powys Mathers

Invitation

Edward Powys Mathers, Simple Poetry

Ballade Of Muhammad Din Tilai

Edward Powys Mathers, Simple Poetry

The Willow-Leaf

Edward Powys Mathers, Simple Poetry

An Orange Sleeve

Edward Powys Mathers, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Fard

A love-sick heart dies when the heart is whole,
For all the heart's health is to be sick with love.

From the Hindustani of Miyan Jagnu (eighteenth century).

Edward Powys Mathers

Fard

Ever your rose face or black curls are with Shaguil;
Because your curls are night and your face is day.

From the Hindustani of Shaguil (eighteenth century).

Edward Powys Mathers

A Poem

Joy fills my eyes, remembering your hair, with tears,
        And these tears roll and shine;
Into my thoughts are woven a dark night with raindrops
        And the rolling and shining of love songs.

From the Hindustani of Mir Taqui (eighteenth century).

Edward Powys Mathers

Night And Morning

The great brightness of the burning of the stars,
Little frightened love,
Is like your eyes,
When in the heavy dusk
You question the dark blue shadows,
Fearing an evil.

Below the night
The one clear line of dawn;
As it were your head
Where there is one golden hair
Though your hair is very brown.

From the Arabic (School of Ebn-el-Moattaz) (ninth century).

Edward Powys Mathers

Distich

Your face upon a drop of purple wine
Shows like my soul poised on a bead of blood.

From the Turkic of Hussein Baikrani.

Edward Powys Mathers

Incurable

I desire the door-sill of my beloved
        More than a king's house;
I desire the shadow of the wall where her beauty hides
        More than the Delhi palaces.
Why did you wait till spring;
Were not my hands already full of red-thorned roses?
        My heart is yours,
So that I know not which heart I hear sighing:
        Yaquin, Yaquin, Yaquin, foolish Yaquin.

From the Hindustani of Yaquin (eighteenth century).

Edward Powys Mathers