Show Thy Face

I Desire a Man

By God, without thee the city is a prison to me,O’er mountain and desert I desire to wander.In one hand a wine-cup and in one hand a curl of the Beloved:Such a dance in the midst of the market-place is my desire.My heart is weary of these weak-spirited companions;I desire the Lion of God and Rustam, son of Zāl.Filings of beauty are in the possession of every one that exists;I desire that quarry and that mine of exquisite loveliness.Bankrupt tho’ I be, I will not accept a small carnelian;The mine of rare tremulous carnelian is my desire.Of this folk I am full of complaint, weeping and weary;I desire the drunkards’ wailing and lamentation.My soul is grown weary of Pharaoh and his tyranny;I desire the light of the countenance of Moses, son of ‘Imrān.They said, ‘He is not to be found, we have sought Him long.’A thing which is not to be found—that is my desire.I am more eloquent than the nightingale, but because of vulgar envyA seal is on my tongue, tho’ I desire to moan.Yesterday the Master with a lantern was roaming about the city,Crying, ‘I am tired of devil and beast, I desire a man.’My state has passed even beyond all yearning and desire;I desire to go from Being and Place toward the Essentials.He is hidden from our eyes, and all objects are from Him;I desire that hidden One whose works are manifest.
Dīvān-e Shams, ode XVI · tr. R. A. Nicholson, 1898

Earliest record: 1441The oldest dated manuscript among those Nicholson lists for this ode is V, the Hofbibliothek copy at Vienna dated 4th Muḥarram 845 A.H. (1441), which he followed for the Persian. The foot of the Persian on p. 64 lists Cowell's manuscript C (no date given), the Leyden manuscript L (851 A.H.), the Lakhnau edition, the Tabriz edition and V; his Appendix III places it in the Tabriz edition at p. 146 and the Lakhnau at p. 32.

Nicholson (1898) tied the wine-cup-and-curl couplet to Najm al-Dīn Kubrā, killed by the Mongols in 618 AH (1221) while gripping an infidel's forelock.

Nicholson, Selected Poems (1898), note on XVI. 10, pp. 242–243, citing Jāmī's Nafaḥāt al-Uns, pp. 480–487, and Browne's Episode of the Bāb, Vol. II, p. 334

Its refrain is “I desire”: the Lion of God, Moses' light, a thing not to be found, and, with a lantern, a man.

More context

Ode XVI, twenty-five couplets each closing on the Persian refrain ārzūst, “is my desire”. Its first line, “Show thy face, for I desire the orchard and the rose-garden”, gives this entry its title but lies outside the passage printed here, which is couplets 9–20. The lover wants mountain and desert rather than the city. He wants a wine-cup in one hand and the Beloved's curl in the other, and he wants ʿAlī, the Lion of God, and Rustam. He wants the mine rather than its filings, and Moses rather than Pharaoh. He wants the thing that is not to be found, and a man, as the Master with a lantern cried through the city. He wants the hidden One whose works are manifest. Nicholson's note traces the lantern story to Diogenes the Cynic and points to its longer telling in the Masnavi, where Whinfield's monk searches a crowded bazaar with a lantern. The ode ends with the speaker as the hoopoe desiring Solomon's presence. Nicholson followed the Vienna manuscript (V) and lists four other witnesses.

Light

Wanting itself becomes the path: each desire outbids a lesser one, ending on the thing the seekers say cannot be found.

Shadow

Weariness with “weak-spirited companions” edges into contempt; Nicholson's note renders couplet 17 “because I am jealous of the crowd”.