Our Neighbor's Daughter

From the diwan "Julnar"
Michel Trad

You slipped by, and this whole world slipped away with you—
this state of ours is no state at all—
a whim brings you here and a laugh carries you off,
O daughter of our neighbor.

And you keep peeping out from behind the silk curtain,
that lilac one, that brown,
and sometimes you stand at the side of the bed,
and sometimes you sing;

And you make a trade of wiping the windowpanes
and of watering your roses,
and your fluttering kerchief, colored like strawberries,
keeps courting your cheeks.

O little dove whose heart something has wounded,
flung down among the thorns,
whose wings longing has broken,
whose soul it has left aching—

are we to stay like this, you say, tormented either way,
scorching from afar?
And if our folk keep their doors barred against us,
shall we invent some new love?

And tomorrow, if I, this amber one,
can find you no longer,
then let your green window come
and pour out its complaint to mine!