An omen from Hafez
Ghazal 382
Now you have come, recite a Fatiha above one sorely wounded;
unclose your lips — for your ruby lip gives life unto the dead.
That one who came to ask of me, recited the Fatiha, and departs —
tell her: one breath's delay, that after her I may set my soul aflowing.
O you who are the physician of the wounded, look upon my tongue,
for this breath and smoke of my breast is the heart's whole burden borne to the tongue.
Though the fever, from warm love, worked deep within my bone, and passed,
the fire of love, unlike the fever, will not depart my bone.
My heart's whole state, from your dark mole, has made its home within its fire;
my eye, from those two eyes of yours, is grown all wounded and undone.
Quench once again my burning heat with the water of my two eyes, and mark
my pulse, that gives no faintest token any longer of life within.
She who forever handed me the wine-glass for delight —
why now does she bear my glass, each hour, before the physician's gaze?
Hafez, your verse has given me a sherbet from the Water of Life;
forsake the physician — come, and recite the prescription of my sherbet.