― حافظ, The Gift /Our Sun.

“The Earth would die if the sun stopped kissing her.”

Hafiz, or Khwajeh Shams al-Din Muhammad Hafez-e Shirazi, a 14th-century Persian mystic and poet.

The eye it cannot choose but see

We cannot bid the ear be still

The redbreast sings from the tall larch

All servants of thy will.

The weed that creeps along the humblest ground

nurtured by twisted roots beneath the clay,

mourns when one kindly growth retires

yet you grant another light of day.

You rule the pomp of light and shade

with all that issues from your glorious fount,

You regulate the motion of our dreams

would that we might sometimes take account.

Ocean and earth compete for your regard,

Your timid day, mingling with the night

stakes claim to favourite child

yet each must in its turn melt from your sight.

Calm as water when the wind is gone your gaze,

no need have you of conscience or to pray,

But gently guide age to his alloted nook

while nurturing fresh blossoms, March or May.

Against or with our wanton will or wish

Our bodies can but feel what they can see

as far south as the south goes or north

and east and west or up or down with thee.

It is a heart, a hard heart that keeps till June

the iron shards of December's ice,

Much it grieves to see what man has made of man,

Robs his brother of a grain of rice.

You season my fireside with heat and friendly chat

of wilderness and wood, blank ocean and mere sky,

If you might doze for forty days of Lent

Forever we would vanish from your quiet eye.

(for Turquoise, friend of Blue)