Life
Many times I turned my face toward you,
Translated from Uzbek · Original text
***Many times I turned my face toward you,Each moment by your side I kept my vigil.My spirit moaned like a wounded bird,Remembering how many kindnesses it had seen from you.Perhaps my face and appearance caught your eyeAnd darkened your heart — what can I do, I have no remedy...But when I moved and came to dwell by you,That I grew whiter, little by little, is the very truth.Perhaps from my going about unrepentant and bankrupt,Hurt came to you beyond all measure, beyond all count.If the ego lays a trap and Iblis plots,What can I do if divine help does not come?!Perhaps I became so attached to peopleThat this love even put down deep roots.You cut me off from them, so that even blood flowed,So that even my mind lost hold of itself.Chains had bound me fast on every side,Unable to fly, my spirit sighed and cried.All your doings are a secret, a secret, and a secret again,You raised up torment within me.Some of the fetters have broken, perhaps,Perhaps a veil has been lifted from the eyes.If you call, it finds no strength to come,A corpse long dead, without a shroud.Now that body is far away from people,It burned up everyone who entered its thoughts.Having been suddenly freed from its burden,It now looked upon its own state with pity.I will turn toward you again each day,Your being, full of light, is clear before my eyes.Settling down in the corner of lowliness,I have appeared in the lane of poverty.If you give me a single coin — I am a beggar, after all,If you drive me out like a dog — you are a king, it suits you.Your dog, who wanders howling far, far away,Will fight over the bone if you throw one.Very well, give no bone; one day, wasted with consumption,I will leave the world without a sound.Though my life has passed with a bleeding heart,I will have lived without fetters, without a cage.Akrom MALIK
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