An omen from Hafez
Ghazal 299
If you drink wine, spill a draught upon the dust;
the sin whose benefit falls to another — why dread it?
Go, spend whatever you have; taste it, and swallow no regret,
for pitiless the age swings down the sword of ruin.
By the dust of your foot, O my tenderly-nurtured cypress:
on the day of doom I'll not lift my foot from off your dust.
Be it hell-born or heaven-born, human or fairy,
in the creed of all, to withhold is the infidelity of the Path.
The architect of the sphere has so sealed the road of the six-sided cloister
that beneath this pit of a cloister no road remains.
The vine-maiden's guile strangely waylays the reason;
may the vault of the vine lie unruined till the Judgement!
On the tavern-road, O Hafez, you passed gladly from the world;
may the prayer of the heart's own people companion your pure heart.