Un presagio da Hafez
Ghazal 16
The arc your playful brow drew back into a bow
took aim at the life of me, wretched and unstrung.
No image of the two worlds yet was, when the hue of love already stood;
time cast the design of affection — not in this present age.
At one coy glance the narcissus made in self-display,
the deceit of your eye flung a hundred tumults into the world.
Wine-flushed and dewed with sweat you walk to the meadow,
for the luster of your face has set the Judas-tree afire.
Last night, drunk, I passed by the meadow's feasting-place,
when the rosebud cast me into doubt about your mouth.
The violet was knotting its own twisted lock,
when the breeze threw in, between them, the tale of your tress.
For shame that I had likened it to your face,
the jasmine, by the breeze's hand, cast dust into its own mouth.
Out of piety I had not, before this, looked on wine and minstrel;
love of the Magian boys has flung me into this and that.
Now with the ruby water of the wine I wash my cloak;
one cannot cast from oneself the portion decreed from eternity.
Perhaps Hafez's deliverance lay in this very ruin,
for the grace of eternity flung him into the Magians' wine.
The world turns now to my desire, since the wheel of time
has flung me into the service of the Lord of the World.