Even were I to set my saddle on the very star above, I should still find there a phantom of you awaiting me.
He yearns for the night’s darkness to endure for him, its blackness intensified in both heart and sight.
Had you but curtailed (1) a little of your generosity, I would have come to visit; even sweet water is forsaken when its flow grows too slender. (2)
This splendid, extended ode runs to a little over seventy lines (3), and his poetry is cast in this same mould.
It is reported that he directed the following to be inscribed upon his grave:
This is the burden my father bequeathed to me,
and I, for my part, have wronged no one.
I say: the philosophers deem the begetting of a child (4) and bringing him into the world to be an injustice to that child, and it appears to me from the condition of this wretch that he was bewildered, never settling upon a single creed.
O Allah, preserve our faith for us.
Al-Qiftī (5) relates that Abū al-ʿAlāʾ said: “I have remained confined to my dwelling since the year 400 AH, striving to devote myself to praise and glorification, save when compelled otherwise. During that time I dictated certain works which Abū al-Ḥasan Ibn Abī Hāshim (6) transcribed on asceticism, admonition, and glorification. Among them are: al-Fuṣūl wa-l-Ghāyāt, one hundred booklets; a treatise on its unusual expressions, twenty booklets (7); Iqlīd al-Ghāyāt fī al-Lugha, ten booklets; the book al-Ayk wa-l-Ghuṣūn, one thousand two hundred booklets; and the book Mukhtalif…"