An omen from Hafez
Ghazal 39
What need has my garden of cypress and pine?
In what is our home-nurtured box-tree less than any?
O comely boy, what creed have you taken up,
that our blood is more lawful to you than mother's milk?
When from afar you see the mark of grief, call for wine;
we have made the diagnosis, and the cure is fixed.
Why should we draw our head from the Magian Elder's threshold?
Fortune is in that house, and the opening at that door.
The grief of love is but a single tale — and the wonder is
that from every tongue I hear it, it is never the same.
Yesterday she promised me union, with wine in her head;
today, let us see what she says, and what is again in her head.
Shiraz, the water of Roknabad, and this sweetly breathing wind —
fault it not, for it is the beauty-mark on the face of the seven climes.
There is a difference between the Water of Khizr, whose home is the dark,
and our water, whose source is 'God is greatest.'
We do not sell away the honor of poverty and contentment;
tell the king that daily bread is fore-ordained.
Hafez, what a wondrous sugar-cane branch is your pen,
whose fruit is more delightful than honey and sugar.