Un presagio da Hafez
Ghazal 214
I saw in a sweet dream one night that a wine-cup lay within my hand;
the reading came, and all the affair was handed over to good fortune.
Full forty years we bore our pain and grief—and in the end, behold,
the remedy for all our woe lay in the hand of two-year wine.
That musk-pod of my heart's desire, which I would beg of destiny,
lay hidden in the very coil of that musk-tressed idol's fragrant hair.
The hangover of my grief had swept all order from my hand at dawn;
then came kind fortune to my aid, and wine was brimming in the cup.
Upon the threshold of the tavern I drink my heart's own blood always;
this single morsel was our daily bread from off the board of fate.
Whoever sowed no seed of love, and plucked no rose of loveliness,
was, in the passing-place of the wind, but guardian of the tulip's bloom.
My passing chanced upon the border of the rose-garden at break of day,
that very hour in which the dawn-bird's only work was sigh and moan.
We saw the heart-alluring verse of Hafez in his monarch's praise;
a single couplet of that ode outshone a hundred learned tracts.
That fierce and charging king, before whom the very lion-seizing sun,
upon the day of battle, showed less than a timid, trembling gazelle.