Guest poem submitted by Mac Robb:
(Poem #1882) Hyacinths If of thy mortal goods thou art bereft, And from thy slender store Two loaves alone to thee are left, Sell one, and with the dole Buy hyacinths to feed thy Soul. |
(alt. Moslih Eddin Saadi) from "Gulistan" (The Garden of Roses), 13th century Persian. Wandering through the Saturday produce and plant market yesterday (one of the many delights of living in Australia) and wondering yet again how these people make a living at this - clearly they're in it for the entertainment and the social contact, judging from the number of times it's "Oh, take another on the house" - I got into a conversation with one of the stallholders who was flogging both pentas (a useful thing to plant in these days of drought) and hyacinths. So I of course wondered if he knew this primary school verse, which I proceeded to recite. (Always a somewhat iffy sort of overture with Australians: they react either with delight or alarm - some sort of lunatic on our hands?) He didn't; neither did my companion. Can it be that I never trotted it out for our children when they were young enough to be receptive to instead of embarrassed by this sort of thing? But it scored me a couple of free plants. (And reciting Constantine Kavafy's "Ithaka" had previously got me rather a lot of olives from Greek guy who hails from Ithaca. Perhaps I should take down my shingle and make a living as a minstrel.) Tracking down the provenance of this well-known verse isn't easy. Google brings up innumerable plant nursery websites but very little in the way of literary exegesis. It develops that it's from "The Garden of Roses," by the 13th century Persian Sufi poet Sa'di. But where does the translation come from? Perhaps someone can enlighten me. Mac Robb. Brisbane, Australia. Moslih Eddin (Muslih-un-Din) Saadi (Sa'di), Gulistan (Garden of Roses) http://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/S/Sadi/index.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saadi
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