My Life Passed in Elegies
Khaqaniخاقانی
در غصه مرا جمله جوانی بگذشت
All my youth went by in sorrow;
ایام به غم چنان که دانی بگذشت
my days went by in grief, as you know.
در مرگ خواص، زندگانی بگذشت
My life went by in the deaths of those closest to me;
عمرم همه در مرثیه‌خوانی بگذشت
my whole life went by in reciting elegies.
A note for readers
A quatrain looking back on a life spent in mourning. Khaqani wrote some of the best-known elegies in Persian, for his son Rashid al-Din, for his wife and for his patrons among the Shirvanshahs, and here he says his whole life passed in reciting them.
More poemsشعرهای دیگر
مرغی دیدم نشسته بر باره طوس
در پیش نهاده کله کیکاووس
I saw a bird perched on the ramparts of Tus,
with the skull of Kay Kavus set down before it.
A Bird on the Walls of Tus
یکی قطره باران ز ابری چکید
خجل شد چو پهنای دریا بدید
A drop of rain fell from a cloud;
it was ashamed when it saw the breadth of the sea.
A Drop of Rain
ابتدای کار سیمرغ ای عجب
جلوه‌گر بگذشت بر چین نیم‌شب
The beginning of the Simorgh’s story, how wonderful:
in all his splendour he passed over China at midnight.