Vow-Breaking

Disheveled locks and sweating,
With smiling lips, and drunken,
Torn-open shirt and singing
The ghazals, jug in hand then.

Her eyes were wild and sighing
Her lips! Toward my bedside
She came and sat and eyeing
My face at midnight last night.

Her head she leaned and nearing
My ear with a mournful song,
“My ancient lover”, asking,
“You’re sleeping? Here I’m
along!”

A lover joyed with drinking
The dawn’s wine so given fine,
To love infidel being
If not then worshipping wine.

O’ go, you pious, blaming
Not those who drain the pain-
cup!
This gift they gave and nothing
On the Day of “Am I not?”*

Into our cup, then drinking
Of what she poured divinely;
From heaven’s wine if being
Or making drunk us earthly.

The smiling wine-cup seeing
And darling's locks entangling,
How many vows then breaking
Like Hafez’s vow-making!

* The day before creation when God asked all souls, "Am I not your Lord?”—establishing humanity’s primordial covenant with the Divine