Ghazal 17
translation of Hafez
My heart’s devoured by the beloved’s fire.
A guest in my home, she herself housed fire.
From a distance she consumed my body.
Near my beloved, my soul consumed fire.
Last night my burning tears, like candle wax,
Melted my heart in a moth-flickered fire.
Of course friends too can set the heart ablaze.
I’ve even seen distant strangers set fire.
I washed religious clothes at the tavern
And threw my reason in the wine-red fire.
Sober, I broke the wine cup in my heart.
My liver still fed on the wine-flagoned fire.
He ripped the religious cap from my skull
And suddenly it seemed like it rained fire.
Hafez, stop chit-chatting. Drink some wine.
Your candle grows short from gossip-fanned fire.
Copyright © 2013 Roger Sedarat. Originally published by Broadside Press, October, 2013. Reprinted with permission of the poet.
Roger Sedarat
Roger Sedarat is an Iranian American poet, scholar, and translator. A recipient of the Willis Barnstone Prize in Translation, his works include the translated poetry collection These Garden Nights: Ghazals of Hafez, which is forthcoming, and the academic study Nature and Nostalgia in the Poetry of Nader Naderpour (Cambria Press, 2017), cowritten with Rouhollah Zarei.