When the beauty of Shinaz
Is my love and guiding star
For one beauty spot I'll give
Samarkand and Bokhara Haflz

When loveless a poet is a bird without flight.
He is flesh with no soul, or a dawn without light.

His love brings the poet all the world and its lands.
His heart is made great by the touch of her hands.

The poet knows love is not tinsel and glare.
For him love's a test that can lay the soul bare.

From a drop, if love orders it, rivers arise.
Narrow lanes, in love's name, become wide as the skies.

Love casts on a poet compassionate eyes,
Because for his love he'd pull stars from the skies.

She pleads-then he'll write the best verse in the land.
She thirsts – he will sink a deep well in the sand.

She wishes and he will make Spring flowers blow.
She wills it and Hell's worst tortures he'll know.

All Shiraz loved a beauty, but she was unkind.
A poet who loved her went out of his mind.

Just one beauty spot made that poet surrender
Samarkand, Bokhara and his heart like small tender.

To challenge Haflz would be foolish of me.
But none in Shiraz was more lavish than we.

Let's bring to our love, in the sky's mighty bowl,
The sea and the land with our heart and our soul.

The whole of the world we should lay at her feet
To make her more bounteous, lovely, complete.

She's worth the whole universe. That is the truth,
For she's the creation of beauty and youth.

With joy and affection her lovely eyes gleam,
With modesty, reason and just self-esteem.

She stands for her rights. In the fight she is bold.
Such women as she can't be bought or be sold.

That she has eclipsed, some see with surprise,
The girl of Shiraz who once dazzled men's eyes!

The woman we love is our equal and free,
For Asia awakened a symbol is she.

Descending to valleys from summits above
She comes to the East like a paen of love.

Her song goes resounding where waterfalls play.
She sings, «Find my image in water and spray.

I'm free as the stream and to Liberty sing.
I'm strength, I am knowledge and nature in Spring!»


She's lovely as dawn when the shadows disperse.
She's clear and resounding as great Tajik verse.

My voice should be gentle, yet loud in her praise.
I show her two marvels on which she should gaze.

Two parts of our Earth that with passion now burn,
That struggle and dream and for happiness yearn.

Majestic they stand straight and tall in the world
Now tyrants from places of power they've hurled.

I offer you friends who have both proved their worth,
Great Asia and Africa, noble by birth.

My love, let them be like two sisters to you.
In you let them see that great dreams can come true.

1963