غزل شمارهٔ 1437

When the thunder and lightning laugh, I recite paeans of praise, I am full of light as the clear sky, I am circling around the moon.

My tongue is knotted like Moses because of the Pharaohs, for jealousy lest a Pharaoh should discover my proof.

Bind my hands if you find me in the encampment of a Pharaoh, for I am the Sultan’s spy.

I am not a spy, I am not a scandal, I am one of the secrets of sanctity; let me go, since I am drunk, that I may let fly a vaunt.

From wine wind arises, for wine stirs up wind, especially the kind of wine through which I am distraught.

If a whiff of this wine were to reach all the world’s ascetics, what a desolation then will appear, what shall I say? I know not.

Why speak of the wine? For if a whiff of those drunkards’ breaths were to penetrate stone and marble, they would brag, “I am the Water of Life.”

My being is a bachelor’s apartment, and those drunkards are gathered together therein; my heart is distraught to know whether I am one of them—amazing!—or myself I am they.

Whether I am their congener, or whether I am other than they, I do not know; all I know is this, that I am in peace and well-being.