Monday 27 October 2008

Drunk on the Wine of the Beloved

"Wash the tarnished copper of your life from your hands;
To be Love's alchemist, you should be working with gold."

"Even though, to pious, drinking wine is a sin,
Don't judge me; I use it as a bleach to wash the color of hypocrisy away."

Two excerpts of two poems by Hafez from "Drunk on the Wine of the Beloved", translated by Thomas Rain Crowe. The first is from "School of Truth", and the second is from "I've Said It Before and I'll Say It Again."

I was reading through my diary and found these two fragments, which I thought pair well together.