The Teacher Goes to Bed Moaning
From Rumi’s Masnavi (مثنوی معنوی), Book 3, section 61 of 185: How the master went to bed and moaned, imagining himself to be ill (در جامه‌ی خواب افتادن استاد و نالیدن او از وهم رنجوری). Below, each of its 9 couplets is given in Persian, followed by R. A. Nicholson’s English translation.
How the master went to bed and moaned, imagining himself to be ill. در جامه‌ی خواب افتادن استاد و نالیدن او از وهم رنجوری
جامه خواب آورد و گسترد آن عجوز گفت امکان نه و باطن پر ز سوز
The old woman brought the bed-clothes and spread them. There was no possibility (of speaking), and her heart was filled with burning (grief).
گر بگویم متهم دارد مرا ور نگویم جد شود این ماجرا
“If I speak, he will hold me suspect; and if I say nothing, this affair will become serious.”
فال بد رنجور گرداند همی آدمی را که نبودستش غمی
A man who has not suffered any pain is made ill by a bad omen.
قول پیغامبر قبوله یفرض ان تمارضتم لدینا تمرضوا
It is obligatory to accept the saying of the Prophet, “If ye pretend to be sick beside me, ye will become (actually) sick.”
گر بگویم او خیالی بر زند فعل دارد زن که خلوت می‌کند
“If I tell him (that he is not ill), he will cast up (conceive) a vain fancy (and will think to himself), ‘My wife has an (evil) design, for she is making arrangements to be alone.
مر مرا از خانه بیرون می‌کند بهر فسقی فعل و افسون می‌کند
She is getting me out of the house, she is plotting and cajoling for the purpose of some wickedness.’”
جامه خوابش کرد و استاد اوفتاد آه آه و ناله از وی می‌بزاد
She prepared his bed, and the master fell down (upon it): sighs and moans were arising from him.
کودکان آنجا نشستند و نهان درس می‌خواندند با صد اندهان
The boys sat there, reciting their lesson with a hundred sorrows in secret,
کین همه کردیم و ما زندانییم بد بنایی بود ما بد بانییم
Thinking, “We have done all this and (still) we are prisoners: it was a bad building (a badly devised plan), and we are bad builders.”
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by: Reza about (category: Masnavi, Persian Poetry)
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