Ghazal 91

O you absent from sight — to God I commend you.

My soul you burned, yet in my heart I love you.

Until I draw the shroud’s hem beneath the foot of the earth,

do not believe that I will release your hem from my hand.

Show me the prayer-niche of your brow, so that at dawn

I may raise my hands in prayer and place them around your neck.

If I must go to the Harut of Babylon,

a hundred kinds of sorcery I will work to bring you back.

I wish to die before you — O faithless physician,

visit your patient, for I am in waiting for you.

A hundred streams of water I have channeled from my eyes alongside,

in hope of the seed of love I plant in my heart for you.

She shed my blood and freed me from love’s grief —

I accept the favor of her dagger-dealing glance upon you.

I weep, and my aim from this flood of tears

is the seed of love that I plant within my heart for you.

Grant me, in grace, a way back to yourself, so that with burning heart

I may pour jewels from my eyes at your feet, breath by breath.

Hafez — wine, beauty, and revelry are not your style —

but in any case you do it, and I overlook it in you.