The Story Begins

Now is the time to drink smooth, delightful wine, for the scent of musk drifts up from the stream. The air is full of clamor, the earth of ferment. Happy is the one who keeps his heart glad with a drink. Whoever has coins, sweets, and a cup of wine can afford to slaughter a whole sheep. I have none of it. Lucky is the one who does. Be generous to the man of empty hands. The whole garden lies beneath a canopy of rose petals; the mountains are all tulips and hyacinths. In the orchard the nightingale keeps up its lament, and the rose blooms taller from its cry. When I see the wind and moisture pouring from the cloud, I cannot tell why the narcissus turns so sad. Through the dark night the nightingale will not sleep; the rose sways under wind and rain. The nightingale laughs and darts about, and when it settles on the rose it lifts its voice. I cannot tell if it is the cloud that loves the rose, when from the cloud I hear a lion's roar. The wind rips its shirt apart, and fire flashes and glitters through its body. For love, the sky has made the earth its witness before the sun that rules over all. Who knows what the nightingale is saying, what it mourns beneath the rose? Watch at dawn and you will hear the nightingale speaking in the old Pahlavi tongue. It grieves over the death of Esfandiar; nothing but this lament is left of him. Like Rostam's cry in the dark night, the cloud tears open the heart and ears of the roaring lion.