Beauty and Love 

Go Out to View  the Pleasure Place of Meaning

 

Glorious Love was swayed by the weather

The eyes of his passion danced with pleasure

 

And Beauty’s mood too took a different way

The two resolved on amusement and play

 

Those two shining candles set out and chose

The Pleasure Place of Meaning for abode

 

That Pleasure Place where there were to be found

Streams of violet and ambergris ground

 

That garden of paradise, that laughing earth

Was clay, but the clay of Adam’s own birth

 

Each young sapling there was a Sidre tree

Each raw plum a heaven of olivine

 

The flourishing grass was eternal life

Its buds were suns and its dew, stars by night

 

The rosegarden was a sea of red light

Rubies fit for sultans, pearls of pure light


A hundred Sinais of epiphany

Those hills never heard you shall not see me

 

Its bright lamps were revelation divine

With Gabriel's wing the meadows were lined

 

Faith’s lamp of night, nightflowers of the soul

Its autumn rose petals, essence of soul

 

Its jonquils the wealth of ocean and mine

Its narcissus, souvenir of paradise

 

The sun was a tree that shed light of dawn

The bird of the spirit there made its home

 

Each tree leaf there was an archangel’s wing

Like blooms of the pomegranate rose pink

 

A Kashmiri shawl with rosebuds on green

Was trite likeness for the blooms on that green

 

The guard at the vineyard gate there was Mars

He tended full moons instead of sunflowers

 

The apples, the oranges, fruit-bearing trees           

Carnelian and coral red treasuries

 

The plain of the steppe wase decked out with stars

And diamonds more numerous than dry stone shards

 

Strewn there in the dirt each fragment of stone

A star guiding lovers faithfully home

 

The Jesus rose never failing to tend

The flowers there was Mary's cyclamen

 

So many fresh downy-cheeked beauties there

The plains, steppes, sprung violets everywhere

 

Like thought’s garden of fantastical things                      

For rosebuds nightingales bloomed with red wings

 

The Hizir of the grass an emerald sea

Peridot ships, rows of shrubbery


Like pistachio trees with branches hung down

Houris with their eyelashes swept the ground

 

The lamp of the rose there shining so fine

Burned brilliantly with the oil of red wine

 

Majnun's willow shook down its curly mane

Till Leyla took up the wild desert's chain

The cypress displayed its lofty physique

Resurrection Day fell down at its feet

 

The red poppy drunk on lunatic wine

Disdained goblets blown of crystal most fine

 

The Erguvan tree's fresh young sprouted shoots

Were bearing new fruit of the fire of youth

 

The vines were like polo sticks set with pearls

That bowed to the ground low like halberdiers

 

Black grapes, Hindus on the roof standing guard

But these stood watch on the roof of the stars

 

As everyone knows, the pink and white peach peach      

Is soft as a pretty girl’s lovely cheek

 

The succulent pear, fragrant, much-preferred

Brought water by hand to cool the orchard

 

The tulips resplendent waved end to end

Like gardeners with royal red diadems

 

The plum trees were like luxuriance of fun

Each parrot-fruit chattered there on and on

 

The apricots, Leyla's ruby red lips

Goblets of red wine were mad for a glimpse

 

The cherries were earrings set with garnet garnet    

The sight of them brought lovers’ looks surfeit

 

Each blade of grass was a Kashmiri Spring

Without change of season like a painting


Without like or number, bewitching eyes

Grazed like deer in that violet paradise

 

Black plums like the spring of life eternal

Or jewels of Ceylon that have no equal

 

Hyacinths framed the cheek of a wild rose

Carnations for those wild curls served as combs

 

The falcons there were not trained to the hunt

It was the peacock who tracked the pheasant

 

The hoopoes like Jam wore crowns on their heads

The fairy troops francolin and partridge

 

That garden of wild and untended flame

Regarded the sun and moon with disdain

 

Hearts burning made fireworks burst in the skies

Enlightened hearts winked there like fireflies 

                                        (Beauty and Love, 659-703)

 

Seyh Galip . Beauty and Love. (trans. by Victoria Rowe Holbrook) New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2005.

 





Beauty and Love at the Pleasure Place of Meaning
traditional miniature painting
6" x 7 5/8" gouache on paper
by Özgen Felek