An omen from Hafez
Ghazal 427
For the lamp of your face the moth became a candle;
for me there is no thought of my own state beside the state of you.
Reason, that used to command the chaining of love's madmen,
went mad itself at the scent of the hyacinth of your tress.
If, at your tress's scent, the soul went to the wind — what of it?
A thousand precious souls be the ransom of the beloved.
Startled with jealousy, I fell from my feet last night,
when I beheld my own idol in the hand of a stranger.
What figures I conjured up — and it availed me nothing!
My spell upon her has turned into a mere fable.
On the fire of her fair cheek, in place of the rue-seed —
save her black mole, who ever saw a grain like that?
For the glad tidings, the candle gave its soul to the breeze in a breath,
when, from the candle of your face, its moth came home to it.
I hold, at the turning of the Friend's lip, one covenant:
that I bear on my tongue naught but the tale of the wine-measure.
Speak not the tale of the school and the cloister — for once again
the longing for the tavern has fallen into Hafez's head.