Your teacher taught you all the arts of playfulness and charm,
The ways of cruelty, coquetry, rebuke, and tyranny.

I am a servant of your bewitching lips and enchanting eyes,
Which have mastered the sorcery of Zahhak and Samiri.

Why should an idol like you need a teacher?
Even the sculptors of China learned artistry from your curls.

A thousand singing nightingales would need to learn
The eloquence of Persian poetry from you.

The brilliance of the sun and moon has faded,
Since the path to your shop has drawn every customer.

All my tribe were scholars of religion,
But love for you has taught me the art of poetry.

Time taught me the skill of verse
The day I saw your drunken eyes, masters of enchantment.

Perhaps your lips learned their narrowness from my heart,
And my frailty mirrored the slenderness of your waist.

The calamity of your love uprooted devotion and piety,
Like a Sufi shedding all for the ways of a dervish.

No wanderer will ever seek the world again
Once they learn to stay at your doorstep.

Never have I seen a human with such form, grace, and manner,
Perhaps you learned your ways from the fairies.

Your henna-stained hands, steeped in the blood of lovers—
Whom did you learn such murderous artistry from?

From now on, I will weep so deeply that men will say,
Saadi has learned the art of swimming in his own tears.