Un presagio da Hafez
Ghazal 207
Be it remembered—how the head of your fair street once was my home,
and how my eye drew all its light from the mere dust upon your door.
Truly, like lily and like rose, out of the grace of that pure friendship,
upon my tongue there lay revealed that which was hidden in your heart.
When the heart rehearsed the lore of meanings from the Elder of the mind,
then love expounded and made clear all that lay hard and dark for it.
Alas for that cruelty and wrong that reigns within this snare of earth!
Alas for all that burning zeal and pleading of that gathering!
It lay within my heart that I would never be without the Friend;
yet what avails, when all the striving of my heart and me was vain?
Last night, in memory of my comrades, I went down to the tavern-house;
I saw the wine-jar, blood within its heart, its foot stuck fast in clay.
Long I turned about and roamed to ask the cause of parting's pain;
the mufti of my reason stood, in this one matter, void of sense.
In truth the turquoise seal-ring of Bu-Ishaq the king shone bright and fair,
yet all his fortune, all his reign, was but a swiftly-fleeting thing.
Did you behold, O Hafez, that loud laughter of the strutting partridge,
which stood so heedless of the gripping talon of the falcon, Fate?