Skip to content
Back to issue
From: Vol.04 N.01 – Where to feel now

Hafez 491

by Mario Petrucci

The rose breaks fast, and opens. Unresisting, I bear it into me – dark wine.

In this season, where is a rose-cup without petals, a petal lacking sheen?

 

If your soil is a dust of self-denial, the rosebud heart surely shrivels.

Gardener, irrigate your plot with wine – let every bud swell a little!

 

See, today, the Sufi – who, yesterday, spoke so solidly on the need

for moderation – out wobbling in the fields, enamoured of the wind.

 

These smooth-cheeked blooms won’t last the week: to come and go is

their nature. Nectar-drinker, you must hurry, as a bee does, to your rose.

 

Fellow lover: spring is in departure, and your rosebush yellows, untended.

The Beloved wine, like your garden’s insect music, drains away, unheeded.

 

Our flock, darkly asleep among the trees, awaited dawn: it came like a cup, up

-side-down, reflecting a Face filling with light, Light dripping at a nick in its lip.

 

See: the Master is also the Minstrel, plucking sky’s instrument to impossible rain.

That truer Sun for field and garden sings Love’s banquet, again, onto empty tables.

translation of the classic ancient Persian poet Hafez, a Sufi master

(14th C, Shiraz, Iran)

Published: January 2017
Mario Petrucci

Award-winning UK poet, ecologist and PhD physicist Mario Petrucci has held major poetry residencies at the Imperial War Museum and with BBC Radio 3.  Heavy Water: a poem for Chernobyl (Enitharmon, 2004) secured the Daily Telegraph/ Arvon Prize.  i tulips (Enitharmon, 2010) exemplifies Petrucci’s distinctive combination of innovation and humanity.  www.mariopetrucci.com

An Australian and international
journal of ecopoetry and ecopoetics.

Plumwood Mountain Journal is created on the unceded lands of the Gadigal and Wangal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and to elders past, present and future. We also acknowledge all traditional custodians of the lands this journal reaches.

© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED