An omen from Hafez
Ghazal 332
Strike not my heart with the point of your glance's arrow,
that I may die before your languid, ailing eye.
The measure of your beauty stands at the very limit of perfection;
give me its alms, for I am destitute and poor.
How long, O ascetic, will you beguile me like a child
with the apple of the orchard, with honey and with milk?
So brimful grew the chamber of my breast with the Friend,
that all thought of self was lost from out my mind.
Fill up the goblet, for I, in the fortune of love,
am the young-fortuned of the world, though I am old.
I have sworn a pact with the sellers of wine,
that on the day of grief I take up nothing but the cup.
May it never be that, save the reckoning of minstrel and of wine,
the pen of my scribe should trace one other design.
Amid this uproar, where no soul inquires of another,
I accept the grace of the Magian Elder alone.
Happy that moment when, from the self-sufficiency of wine,
I am set utterly free from king and from vizier.
I am that bird whose call, at every eve and dawn,
comes ringing down from the rooftop of the Empyrean.
Like Hafez, I hold His treasure hidden in my breast,
though the pretender look on me as a thing despised.