Un presagio da Hafez
Ghazal 47
In the tavern's street, each wayfarer who knew the road
deemed it a ruinous thought to knock at any other door.
Time bestowed the crown of rendship on no one
save him who knew the world's whole pride to lie within that cap.
Whoever found a path to the wine-house threshold
knew, by the grace of the cup, the secrets of the cloister.
Whoever read the two worlds' secret in the writing on the cup's rim
knew Jamshid's cup's own mysteries from the imprint of the road's dust.
Ask of us nothing beyond the devotions of the mad,
for the shaikh of our creed accounted sanity a sin.
My heart, on its life, begged no quarter of the cupbearer's narcissus,
for well it knew the ways of that black-hearted Turk.
From the tyranny of the ascendant star, at dawn my eye
so wept that Venus beheld it and the moon knew.
The tale of Hafez and the cup he drains in secret —
what room is there for the constable? The king himself knew.
The high-throned king, to whom the nine arcades of the sky
were but a sample of the curve of his court's own arch.