The Garden of Bright Waters Part 12

Winter scourges his horses Through the North, His hair is bitter snow On the great wind.

The trees are weeping leaves Because the nests are dead, Because the flowers were nests of scent And the nests had singing petals And the flowers and nests are dead.

Your voice brings back the songs Of every nest, Your eyes bring back the sun Out of the South, Violets and roses peep Where you have laughed the snow away And kissed the snow away, And in my heart there is a garden still For the lost birds.

_Song of Daghestan._

_GEORGIA_

 

PART OF A GHAZAL

Lonely rose out-splendouring legions of roses, How could the nightingales behold you and not sing?

_By Rustwell of Georgia (from the Tariel, twelfth century)._

_HINDUSTAN_

FARD

Love brings the tiny sweat into your hair Like stars marching in the dead of night.

_From the Hindustani of Mir Taqui (eighteenth century)._

INCURABLE

I desire the door-sill of my beloved More than a king's house; I desire the shadow of the wall where her beauty hides More than the Delhi palaces.

Why did you wait till spring; Were not my hands already full of red-thorned roses?

My heart is yours, So that I know not which heart I hear sighing: Yaquin, Yaquin, Yaquin, foolish Yaquin.

_From the Hindustani of Yaquin (eighteenth century)._

A POEM

Joy fills my eyes, remembering your hair, with tears, And these tears roll and s.h.i.+ne; Into my thoughts are woven a dark night with raindrops And the rolling and s.h.i.+ning of love songs.

_From the Hindustani of Mir Taqui (eighteenth century)._

FARD

Ever your rose face or black curls are with s.h.a.guil; Because your curls are night and your face is day.

_From the Hindustani of s.h.a.guil (eighteenth century)._

MORTIFICATION

Now that the wind has taught your veil to show your eyes and hair, All the world is bowing down to your dear head; Faith has crept away to die beside the tomb of prayer, And men are kneeling to your hair, and G.o.d is dead.

_From the Hindustani of Hatifi (eighteenth century)._

FARD

A love-sick heart dies when the heart is whole, For all the heart's health is to be sick with love.

_From the Hindustani of Miyan Jagnu (eighteenth century)._

_j.a.pAN_

GRIEF AND THE SLEEVE

Tears in the moonlight, You know why, Have marred the flowers On my rose sleeve.

Ask why.

_From the j.a.panese of Hide-Yos.h.i.+._

DRINK SONG

The crows have wakened me By cawing at the moon.

I pray that I shall not think of him; I pray so intently That he begins to fill my whole mind.

This is getting on my nerves; I wonder if there is any of that wine left.

_j.a.panese Street Song._