An omen from Hafez
Ghazal 143
For years the heart implored of us the world-revealing cup of Jam,
and begged from strangers for the very thing it held within itself.
A pearl that lies beyond the shell of being and of space
it went to seek among the drowned along the ocean's lip.
Last night I bore my tangled trouble to the Magian Elder's door,
who by the sheer power of his gaze was solving the enigma.
I found him glad and smiling, the wine-cup in his hand,
and in that mirror gazing on a hundred wondrous scenes.
I said: 'When did the Sage bestow this world-beholding cup?'
He answered: 'On the very day He wrought this vault of blue.'
A soul astray — in every state his God was at his side;
he saw Him not, and from afar kept calling on his God.
All the conjuring feats that here he claimed to work by his own art,
Samiri claimed before the staff and the white shining hand of Moses.
That Friend, by whom the gallows-head was lifted up on high —
his only crime was this: he made the hidden secrets plain.
If but the grace of the Holy Spirit lend its aid once more,
then others too shall work the wonders that the Messiah wrought.
I asked him: 'To what end the chain of the idols' curling locks?'
He said: 'Hafez was voicing a complaint of his own frenzied heart.'