Is the sinking moon like a prisoner
sentenced somewhere to Black Water,
perhaps left hanged on the horizon
of an Andaman island? But here,
in Kashmir, by these waters,
its light will leave me—where?
My father is—in Persian—reciting
Hafiz of Shiraz, that “Nothing
in this world is without terrible
barriers— / Except love, but only when
it begins.” And the host fills
everyone’s glass again.
So what is separation’s geography?
Everything is just that mystery,
everything is this roar that deafens:
this stream has branched off from the Indus,
in Little Tibet, just to
find itself where Porus
miles down (there it will join the Jhelum)
lost to the Greeks. It will become,
in Pakistan, the Indus again.
Leaning against the Himalayas
(the mountains here are never
in the distance), wine-glass
in hand, I see evening come on. It is
two months since you left us. So this
is separation? Sharpened against
rocks, the stream, rapid-cutting the night,
finds its steel a little stained
with the beginning light,
and the moon must rise now from behind
that one pine-topped mountain to find
us without you. I stare at one guest
who is asking Father to fill them
in on—what else?—the future,
burnishing that dark gem
of Kashmir with a history of saints, with
prophecy, with kings, and with myth,
and I want them to change the subject
to these waters that must already
be silver there where the moon
sees the Indus empty
itself into the Arabian Sea. What
rustle of trees the wind forgot
reaches me through this roar as the moon,
risen completely, silvers the world
so ruthlessly, shining on
me a terror so pearled
Google Translate renders these lines as:
“Every building you see was disruptive
Except for love, it is free from defects.
Juvenilia 
So, as it turns out, the Hafez verse is, literally,:
//Every foundation [of the edifices] you see is inclined to breach [some day]
Except the foundation of love, for it is devoid of any breach.//
Or, to stay with Ali’s idiom, something like:
Nothing in this world will stay
Except love
for its foundations do not give way
Clearly, ASA was dancing to his own music . But for my having across his translation of Faiz, I don’t think I would ever have even come close to knowing what Hafiz may actually have written, or meant.
Also, oddly, I could not find this verse said to be of Hafiz anywhere else, other than in Faiz, and Ali’s translations in two places – in Rebel’s Silhouette and then his own poem seem – seemed to be the only ones online.
Thanks to a friend, the missing Hafiz ghazal mystery is – finally – cracked too, for there was a bit of an alteration in the Faiz poem on Rekhta, and searching for this:
مگر بنای محبت که خالی از خلل است
[मगर बनाए मुहब्बत कि ख़ाली अज़ ख़लल अस्त]
instead of
بجز بنائے محبت کہ خالی از خلل است
ब-जुज़ बिना-ए-मोहब्बत कि ख़ाली अज़-ख़लल-अस्त
helped.
See here
LikeLike