Repository path: workshop/translations/hafez-bekonad/R57-v1/translation.md · rendered 2026-09-09

T-hafez-bekonad-R57-v1 — Hafez غزل ۱۸۷ under Walter Leaf's printed contract, in two arms

Source: workshop/translations/hafez-bekonad/source.md — Ganjoor, Qazvini–Ghani, sh187 (= Brockhaus 234 = Leaf's ode XV), 7 bayts, radif بکند, qāfiya in -ā. Regime: R57 (Leaf 1898's contract). Translated by: the lead, in session, at no API cost. Contamination: none, measured — see ../dependence-note.md. Lineage: no prior lead rendering of this poem. No published English of it was opened before the freeze.

Tier D is NOT PASSED. Nothing below is a quality claim, and the lead does not judge its own translation (charter §5).

Arm LEAF — clauses 2–5 of R57: Leaf's metre 2, monorhyme, radif, bayt for bayt

Metre 2 of Leaf's own table, the second commonest in Hafez: ⏑ – ⏑ – ⏑ ⏑ – – ‖ ⏑ – ⏑ – ⏑⏑̄ –, rendered by stress for quantity — fifteen syllables, stresses on 2, 4, 7, 8, 10, 12 and 15.

So burn, my heart! for the heart's fire all things' amending will do. One prayer at night, in the deep dark, all ills' defending will do.

Endure her chiding, that fair face, and bear it well for love's sake; One glance of hers, and that sly smile, of wrongs their ending will do.

For him from earth to the high heav'n the veils are drawn and are gone, Whoever unto the world-showing cup his tending will do.

The leech of love has the Christ-breath in him, and ruth, and is kind; Yet when he sees in thee no pain, for whom his mending will do?

So cast thy case on thy own God, and keep thy heart at its ease; For if the foe will not be kind, yet God's own sending will do.

I grow so sick of this dead luck that sleeps; perchance it may wake And at the hour of the dawn-psalm one prayer ascending will do.

So Hafiz burned to the bare bone and caught no breath of her hair — Unless the wind at the dawn this good hap's befriending will do.

The scansion, written out so it can be checked rather than believed

x short/unstressed, / long/stressed. Target: x / x / x x / / x / x / x x /.

14 of 14 lines at fifteen syllables; 14 of 14 on the pattern. Two places where a reader may put the stress differently and the line still scans: 1a all and 7b good, both unstressed before a stressed noun (things', hap's).

Radif: will do closes 8 of 8 rhyming positions. Rhyme: amending · defending · ending · tending · mending · sending · ascending · befriending — eight distinct words on one rhyme, matching Hafez's eight distinct qāfiya. Both hemistichs of bayt 1 rhyme, as the form requires.

Arm FREE — the same clauses with the metre released

Line length free. Same rhyme family and the same radif, so that the rhyme inventory is not a second difference between the arms (R57 §6).

Burn, heart, and burn on! for the burning of thee a hundred things' amending will do. One supplication at midnight a hundred calamities' defending will do.

Bear the chiding of that peri-faced beloved as a lover bears it, for one coquettish look a hundred cruelties' ending will do.

From the earthly kingdom up to the kingdom of the angels they lift the veil away for him, for whoever upon the world-displaying cup his service and tending will do.

Love's physician is Messiah-breathed, and full of pity; and yet — if he can see no sickness in thee, for whom his mending will do?

Throw thy business upon thy own God, and let thy heart be glad; for if the accuser will show no mercy, God's own sending will do.

I am sick of this sleeping fortune of mine. It may be that a waking, at the hour of the dawn Fatiha, one prayer of mine ascending will do.

Hafiz has burned away, and has caught no least breath of the Friend's long hair, unless to this good fortune the dawn-wind's own befriending will do.

Line lengths: 20, 16, 15, 14, 24, 19, 13, 14, 13, 14, 17, 17, 18, 16 syllables — mean 16.4, range 13–24, against 15 held exactly fourteen times in LEAF.

Translator's log — frozen 2026-08-30, before the audit was run and before any published English

of this poem was opened

Written under R51 §1 as R57 §1 imports it: decisions and alternatives, not quality claims. Any evaluative sentence here is internal-judgment-only.

D1 — The choice that governs everything: what English word carries بکند

بکند is the aoristic/subjunctive of کردن, to do. In seven of eight positions it is the verb of a light-verb compound whose noun is the qāfiya. Four options were enumerated before a line was written:

1. A single lexical verb per bayt — averts, requites, serves, cures, prays, guides. Most idiomatic English; destroys the radif outright, because no word repeats. Rejected: clause 4 of R57 makes the radif mandatory.
2. does, a bare monosyllable at the line end. Under metre 2 position 15 is stressed, so the rhyme would fall on positions 13–14, two unstressed syllables — a dactylic rhyme (remedy · malady · litany). Available, and Leaf himself says the Persian rhyme "need not" begin on an accented syllable and that he attempted an unaccented rhyme "without much satisfaction" in ode XXI. Rejected as the harder of two workable routes.
3. will do, two syllables filling 14–15. Then the rhyme sits at 12–13, / x — an ordinary English feminine rhyme, and position 12 is a long. Chosen.
4. A passive, is done — puts the qāfiya in subject position and so avoids the inversion, but turns seven active clauses into seven passives and loses the agent Hafez names in three of them (نیاز, کرشمه, صبا). Rejected as a change of voice, not of order.

will do also does lexical work the alternatives do not: English will do carries both shall perform and shall suffice, and 1a, 1b and 2b are all sufficiency claims — your burning will get it done. That is a gain, and it was not planned; it was noticed at bayt 1 and then relied on.

D2 — The rhyme family, chosen before any line, and why -ending

The rhyme must be a two-syllable / x word before will do, and eight distinct such words must carry eight unrelated senses. Families enumerated: -eeping, -aking, -ealing, -owing, -ending. -ending was chosen because English happens to hold, in one rhyme, a word for almost every sense the poem asks for: mending = cure, tending = service, defending = averting, ending = putting an end to, sending = what God does, ascending = what a prayer does, befriending = guiding, amending = setting affairs right. That is luck, and it is the reason this poem could be done at all under this contract; a poem whose eight qāfiya senses did not fall inside one English rhyme would not have yielded.

This is the log's one prediction, registered here before the audit ran: the constraint that actually bites in a monorhymed English ghazal is not the metre and not the inversion but whether the source's rhyme-bearing senses happen to lie inside a single English rhyme. Leaf, translating twenty-eight odes, met that condition twenty-eight times or gave something up.

D3 — The inversion, and it was not avoidable

Every rhyming position in the LEAF arm puts the object before the verb: all things' amending will do, all ills' defending will do, his tending will do. RS-20260829b-inversion-price priced this move at 2.407 points of ten in plain lexis and found archaism does not buy it back. It is paid eight times here. It was not chosen: with the radif mandatory and the qāfiya its object, English word order leaves no other place for the verb.

D4 — What the metre took, bayt by bayt

Each row is a thing the LEAF arm dropped, added or changed that the FREE arm keeps, with the reason.

Thirteen losses in fourteen lines, and they are of one kind. Twelve of the thirteen are content words squeezed out by a slot of the wrong shape — the numeral صد twice, the epithets پری‌چهره and مشفق, the realia فاتحه, the figure ملک/ملکوت. Not one of them is caused by the rhyme or by the radif. The FREE arm keeps all thirteen, and keeps them without effort.

D5 — What the FREE arm cost that LEAF did not

Line length ran from 13 to 24 syllables. Bayt 3 in FREE is 24 syllables against 19 in its own second line, so the couplet is visibly lopsided on the page; under LEAF every line is the same length and the poem looks like the ghazal it is. Nothing else was given up.

D6 — One thing the LEAF arm gained that was not designed

Positions 7–8 are two consecutive stresses. English supplies these as compound nouns and stressed monosyllabic pairs: heart's fire, deep dark, fair face, sly smile, high heav'n, world-showing, Christ-breath, no pain, own God, be kind, dead luck, dawn-psalm, bare bone. Hafez's Persian is dense in exactly such compounds. The metre's hardest slot turned out to select for the figure the source is made of. This sentence is internal-judgment-only.

D7 — What was not verified

The metre assignment is Leaf's, taken from his printed table on his authority. The lead's own scansion of the Persian مطلع agreed with his metre 2 at fourteen of fifteen positions and differed at position 8; the discrepancy was not resolved and no claim here depends on it. No independent scansion of the English was bought; the table above is the hand's own and is printed so that it can be disputed.