O laughing beauty, who enhanced your ruby lips?
O garden of elegance, who picked you among all?

No better prey has been hunted in a lifetime,
No sweeter melon has ever been cut.

O Khidr, I won’t bless you for the Water of Life,
Do you know the toil Alexander endured for it?

Is it someone’s blood you’ve spilled, or red wine,
Or black mulberries staining your garment’s line?

You mingle with all, yet escape from me alone;
It’s not your fault but the misfortune I’ve known.

It’s best the wall falls at once entirely,
So none may claim they haven’t seen this garden clearly.

The ripened fruit doesn’t linger long on its bough,
For all know how sweet and ripe it is now.

Even the rose wouldn’t open its mouth last week,
But today the morning breeze has torn its veil, unique.

In the Tigris, where ducks dared not venture before,
Ships now sail freely since the Tatars cut the shore.

Gone are the days when they’d open sweet sherbets for you;
This worn vessel suffices, though strangers drank it too.

Saadi, seek new aspirations in the garden’s embrace,
And leave this ruined one where flocks now graze.