You can click here to read a long selection from Afghanistan's great epic poem SOHRAB AND RUSTUM, translated by Matthew Arnold.

How does a part of the word leave the world?
How can wetness leave water?

Don't try to put out a fire
by throwing on more fire!
Don't wash a wound with blood!

No matter how fast you run,
your shadow more than keeps up.
Sometimes, it's in front.

Only full, overhead sun
diminishes your shadow.

But that shadow has been serving you!
What hurts you, bless you.
Darkness is your candle.
Your boundaries are your quest.

I can explain this, but it would break
the glass cover on your heart,
and there's no fixing that.

You must have shadow and light source both.
Listen, and lay your head under the tree of awe.

When from that tree, feathers and wings sprout
on you, be quieter than a dove.
Don't open your mouth for even a cooooooo.

When a frog slips into the water, the snake
cannot get it. Then the frog climbs back out
and croaks, and the snake moves toward him again.

Even if the frog learned to hiss, still the snake
would hear through the hiss the information
he needed, the frog voice underneath.

But if the frog could be completely silent,
then the snake would go back to sleeping,
and the frog could reach the barley.

The soul lives there in the silent breath.

And the grain of barley is such that,
when you put it in the ground,
it grows.

Are these enough words,

Or shall I squeeze more juice from this?
Who am I, my friend?
 

Sometimes I forget completely
what companionship is.
Unconscious and insane, I spill sad
energy everywhere. My story
gets told in various ways: a romance,
a dirty joke, a war, a vacancy.

Divide up my forgetfulness to any number,
it will go around.
These dark suggestions that I follow,
are they a part of some plan?
Friends, be careful. Don't come near me
out of curiosity, or sympathy.

A Tree With Bitter Seed
by Abu Shukur of Balkh

A tree with a bitter seed
Fed with butter and sugar
Will still bear a bitter fruit.
From it, you will taste no sweetness.

Bitter Fruit Falling Upon the Earth
by Ustad Khalilullah Khalili

I am the bitter fruit falling upon the earth.
Thus in the clutches of time I remain.
O spring of liberty! Your grace, what else it could be
But to render this bitter fruit sweet?
The greatest wealth of this world is the company of friends,
The agony of death:
Separation from them,
But since they are all together, the friends,
Resting deep in the heart of the dust,
What difference does it make
Whether alive or dead.
Out of pain and sorrow destiny has molded me.
What, Alas, has been my joy from the cup of life?
Like a candle burning in the blowing wind,
I tremble, I burn, ... I die.