An omen from Hafez
Ghazal 206
Before this, you had more of care and thought for lovers than you show;
your love-making with us of old was famed through all the world's far bounds.
Be it remembered—those long nights of company with the honey-lipped,
when love's own secret was our theme and lovers' brotherhood our talk.
Before ever they raised aloft this green roof and this enamel arch,
the sole horizon of my eye was the fair archway of her brow.
From the first dawn-breath of eternity to the last evening of all time,
affection and love stood firm upon one covenant and one sworn pact.
If the beloved's shadow fell across the lover—what of that?
We stood in need of her alone; and she, she yearned for us in turn.
Though the beauty of the moon-faced fair of the gathering bore off heart and faith,
yet all our talk and theme were still of grace of soul and gentle ways.
A beggar at my monarch's door once made a subtle, pointed jest:
he said, 'At every board I sat, God was the Giver of my bread.'
If the thread of my rosary snapped, then hold me pardoned and excused;
my hand was tangled in the skirt of the silver-limbed cupbearer's robe.
If on the sacred Night of Power I took a draught at break of day,
blame me not: the beloved came in merriment—a cup lay on the ledge.
The verse of Hafez, in the age of Adam, in the garden of the blest,
was the fair adorning of the leaves of the book of eglantine and rose.