The spot of your mole cannot be stamped on vision's tablet
unless from the pupil of the eye we seek black ink.
With all its soul the heart desired a loving sign from your sweet lips.
With a smile of sugar your lips replied, "It's a higher bid we're looking for."*
"Persian culture combines a sense of great refinement in almost everything with a sensuality that is at the same time spiritual. This wedding between the sensual and the spiritual is usually not well understood in the modern West, where the two have become dichotimized into opposing categories and people cannot understand how someone can talk of the beautiful ruby lips of women, but be talking at the same time about the Divine Qualities..."
-Seyyed Hossein Nasr, "In Search of the Sacred"
*excerpt from Poem CCCLXI, "The Collected Lyrics of Hafiz of Shiraz" translated by Peter Avery.
