Un presagio da Hafez
Ghazal 217
O Muslims, once upon a time I had a heart within my breast,
to which, if trouble ever came, I would confide my every grief.
Whenever I would fall from sorrow into some deep whirlpool's swirl,
within its counsel there yet lay the hope of reaching some far shore.
A heart that shared the pain with me, a friend that saw the wiser way—
and that was the sure prop and stay of every man who owned a heart.
It was clean lost to me and gone within the beloved's own long street;
what a snaring, skirt-seizing dwelling-place, O Lord, that place became!
Even a faultless, flawless art is not exempt from deprivation—
yet who was ever a more deprived and beggared suppliant than I?
Have mercy now upon this soul, distracted, scattered, torn apart,
which once, in days now long ago, was a whole master of his craft.
Since love first taught and schooled my tongue in all the subtle arts of speech,
my words became the finest point and glory of each gathering.
Say now no more that Hafez is a knower of the subtleties,
for we have seen him, and behold—a stubborn, arrant ignoramus!