Ghazal 63

No one has seen your face, yet you have a thousand rivals —

you are still a bud, yet a hundred nightingales attend you.

If I came to your lane, it is not so strange —

in that realm there are thousands of strangers like me.

In love, there is no difference between cloister and tavern —

wherever there is a ray of the beloved’s face, there is love.

Where they make a show of the chapel’s work,

there too is the bell of the monk’s monastery and the name of the cross.

What lover ever came whose beloved did not look upon his state?

O master, the pain is real — and there is indeed a physician.

All this crying of Hafez is not in vain, after all —

there is a strange tale here, and a wondrous account.