Complaint

Let me then, I say, make complaint of the severity of that Fickle Fair One.
I cry, and my cries sound sweet in His ear;
He requires from the two worlds cries and groans. How shall I not wail under His chastening hand? How shall I not be in the number of those bewitched by Him?
How shall I be other than night without His day? 
Without the vision of His face that illumes the day?
His bitters are very sweets to my soul, I am enamored of my own grief and pain,
For it makes me well-pleasing to my peerless King. 
I use the dust of my grief as salve for my eyes,
That my eyes, like seas, may team with pearls.

Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi From: Charles F. Horne, ed., The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East, Vol. VIII pp. 111-130.