Ghazal 41

Though the wine is joyous, and the wind, flowers sorts Harp music and scent of wine, the officer reports. If you face an adversary and a jug of wine Choose the wine because, fate cheats and extorts. Up your ragged, patched sleeves, hide & keep your cup Like this flask of wine, fate too bleeds and distorts. With my teary eyes, I cleanse my robe with wine Self-restraint and piety is what everyone exhorts. Seek not your joy in the turn of the firmaments Even my filtered clear red fluid, dregs sports. This earth and sky is no more than a bleeding sieve That sifts and sorts kingly crowns and courts. Hafiz, your poems invaded Fars and Iraqi ports It is now the turn of Baghdad and Tabrizi forts. Translated by: Shahriar Shahriari