Do You Know What Fortune Is?
Hafezحافظ
دانی که چیست دولت دیدار یار دیدن
Do you know what fortune is? To see the face of the friend,
در کوی او گدایی بر خسروی گزیدن
to choose begging in his street over kingship.
از جان طمع بریدن آسان بود ولیکن
To cut off all hope of life is easy, but
از دوستان جانی مشکل توان بریدن
to be cut off from dear friends is hard.
خواهم شدن به بستان چون غنچه با دل تنگ
I shall go to the garden with a heavy heart, like a bud,
وان جا به نیک نامی پیراهنی دریدن
and there, for honour’s sake, tear open my shirt;
گه چون نسیم با گل راز نهفته گفتن
now, like the breeze, to tell the rose a hidden secret,
گه سر عشقبازی از بلبلان شنیدن
now to hear the secret of love-play from the nightingales.
A note for readers
The opening couplets of a ghazal whose rhymes are all verbal nouns, ‘seeing’, ‘choosing’, ‘cutting off’, so that it reads like a list of life’s true goods. The bud that bursts open is pictured as tearing its shirt. The excerpt gives four of its seven couplets; the last, not given here, names the poet’s patron Shah Yahya.
More poemsشعرهای دیگر
یک عمر می‌توان سخن از زلف یار گفت
در بند آن مباش که مضمون نمانده است
One could speak for a lifetime of the beloved’s tresses;
do not fret that there are no themes left.
A Lifetime on the Beloved’s Tresses
بلبلی برگ گلی خوش رنگ در منقار داشت
و اندر آن برگ و نوا خوش ناله‌های زار داشت
A nightingale held in its beak a rose petal of lovely colour,
and with that petal and its song it made sweet, piteous laments.
A nightingale held a rose petal
ستاره ای بدرخشید و ماه مجلس شد
دل رمیده ما را رفیق و مونس شد
A star shone out and became the moon of the gathering,
became friend and companion to our startled heart.