An omen from Hafez
Ghazal 95
Ever the breeze of your curling tress keeps me drunk and undone;
each moment the guile of your sorcerer's eye lays me in ruin.
After all this long patience, O Lord, may one yet see a night
when we kindle the eye's own candle within your brow's prayer-niche?
The black of the tablet of sight I cherish, and for this cause:
that it is the soul's own copy of the tablet of your Hindu mole.
If you would once, at a single stroke, adorn the world forever,
bid the breeze to lift, for a while, the veil from your face.
And if you would cast upon the world the very rite of annihilation,
let loose your tress, that a thousand souls may rain from every hair.
I and the poor breeze — two wanderers wandering without gain;
I drunk with your eye's enchantment, and it with your tresses' scent.
Bravo, the aspiration that Hafez holds! — of this world and the next,
nothing at all comes into his eye but the dust of your street's head.