Love poems and verses by Mazhit Gafuri are wonderful indeed. Traditional forms of oriental poetry with their intricate rhyme interlace, alliterations and refined similes just help him to express the most genuine feelings living in his heart, be it admiration for the beauty of the beloved girl, hope of a happy rendezvous or the bitterness of parting. Classical poetry for Mazhit Gafuri is a well-known, homelike space that can be arranged at his own free will. And then it does not seem strange for the poet either to use the features of a garden once stood in a calm street in Ufa in combination with those of an ideal garden in the style of Hafiz full of nightingale singing and the fragrance of roses or to liken a lover to a photo retoucher. Each poem is based upon some actual life event and born from immediate impression and deep emotion.
I have done my best to preserve both the rhyme pattern and the splendour of similes. In English literature there are marvelous translations of Omar Khayym’s rubais by Edward Fitzgerald, Reynold Nicholson’s versions of Old Persian poetry, oriental motives in Byron’s lyrics. They served as an example to me.
A few words about my background. On graduating from the Faculty of Romanic and Germanic Philology of the Bashkir State University (Foreign-Language Faculty in my days) I spent several years working at the Aircraft Production Plant in Kazan and then continued my career at the Ufa Research Centre, Russian Academy of Sciences. My translation experience lies in the field of geology, theoretical mechanics, medicine and other subjects. All the more interesting challenge to me was Mazhit Gafuri’s poetic heritage.                                                                                                                           
   
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF THE YOUTH
If love of mine were given to other men,
They’d lack their strength to lift it then.
I’m drinking wine out of the bowl of beauty,
As sweet as paradise, yet thirsty feel again.
 
I knew not such a passion in the past,
My former pleasures will be swept like dust.
The fairest girls be there in the world,
I will reject them all – for you at last.
 
Photographers and lovers do the same
Retouching portraits – that is their aim.
Like a photographer I take your finest image
To cry for mercy in the midst of flame.
 
Your image is fondly cherished in my soul.
You give the meaning to my life awhole.
Am I to prove my feelings? Look and see –
I’ve pined away, turned yellow, burnt to coal!
 
You, you alone are reigning in my mind…
There’s no remedy for me to find…
It’s at your will to heal the cruel torments –
Oh darling, come to me, be so kind!
 
You will revive me with a smile one day,
The quacks will have to go away.
"The Nightingale is singing to his Rose”,
My fervent love will make them say.
1907
 
IN THE GARDEN
Why is my soul flowerless tonight?
A can imagine no reasons right.
And even is I saw a hundred houris,
I wouldn’t be happy with the sight.
 
Oh, nightingales with warbles sweet,
Do you enjoy the beauty of the garden?
Or are you fascinated by the heat
Of maiden’s eyes quite of a sudden?
 
The little singers hear another call!
In love of splendid roses they fall.
The beauteous girl I am enchanted by
For them is not the dearest at all.
 
Love offers many paths for us to go –
It can be either friendly thing or foe.
Reproaches mean nothing to a man
Who loves with all his heart, you know.
 
Don’t mock the poor youth, do not abase –
He isn’t guilty of his choice in any case.
It’s Love and only Love that brings
The greatest joys, the greatest sufferings.
1909
 
 
LOVE
My Love does not decline, it grows more and more.
Within the Garden called Love I’ve lost my way.
I try to run away and fail to find the door,
And back I come to bend to Love and stay.
 
I fear of myself indeed: resistance is but vain,
This passion has become my best and only guide.
Should I escape or is it fate for me to gain?  
I am surrounded by Fire on every side!
1914
 
***
Pray when the Moon begins to rise,
You veil the face,
Or else the jealous Moon will envy                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 
Your perfect grace.
 
She’ll rush ashake with awful rage
Above the sky
And leave the Earth just in the dark
Alone to cry.
1917
 
JOY AND GRIEF
Mind, joy and grief resemble each other,
If not by face, by their habits rather.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
 
One of the sisters always goes with you:
Grief fades away, and joy returns anew.
 
You do not grieve, but in the future near
You’ll have to part with joy – grief will appear.
 
Lamenting over the fate when old as when a boy,
You cross the other side ‘tween grief and joy. 
1919
 
A MIRACLE
There was a miracle yesterday –
A sudden shining light,
At my returning back to home
Late in the still of night.
 Was it the sun? Behind the hill
The bright sun had already set!
The moon, maybe? But in the sky
No moon had risen yet!
 And where this light appeared from,
I guessed not straight away,
Until I saw you, my beloved,
Walk shining like the day.
1919
 
***
With hands so soft you offered once the Wine of Love to me.
"Oh, take a sip! It sparkles with joy,” you uttered smilingly.
19..-1934
 
***
No matter how extremely fine
Your portrait might be made,
Your face kept in the heart of mine
For years will not fade.
 
Your features, beautifully true,
No copy can exceed.
I needn’t the portrait, for it’s you
Whom I shall always need.
19..-1934
 
THE CURLS OF HER HAIR
A curly-haired beauty is full of special grace.
How readily the hair obeys her every pace!
Sometimes the curls droop down, inanimately still,
Sometimes the curls get playing at their lady’s will.
 
More charmfulness is added by those lustrous curls
That show off her ears and earrings with pearls.
 
And when the curls come fluent upon her cheeks in floods,
The maiden’s cheeks turn crimson as bright as rosebuds.
1919