Hafez · Where is right conduct, and where am I?
صلاح کار کجا و من خراب کجاببین تفاوت ره کز کجاست تا به کجا
دلم ز صومعه بگرفت و خرقه سالوسکجاست دیر مغان و شراب ناب کجا
چه نسبت است به رندی صلاح و تقوا راسماع وعظ کجا نغمه رباب کجا
ز روی دوست دل دشمنان چه دریابدچراغ مرده کجا شمع آفتاب کجا
چو کحل بینش ما خاک آستان شماستکجا رویم بفرما از این جناب کجا
مبین به سیب زنخدان که چاه در راه استکجا همی روی ای دل بدین شتاب کجا
بشد که یاد خوشش باد روزگار وصالخود آن کرشمه کجا رفت و آن عتاب کجا
قرار و خواب ز حافظ طمع مدار ای دوستقرار چیست صبوری کدام و خواب کجا
This verse speaks of the gap between who others expect you to be and who you really are. Perhaps you are weary of keeping up appearances, and long for something more honest and alive. Hafez reminds you that the light you seek is a sun, not a borrowed lamp, and that the threshold you love is where you belong. Yet he also warns the hasty heart: there is a well hidden beside the lovely path. Move towards what is true for you, but slowly and with open eyes.
Where is right conduct in affairs, and where am I, the ruined one?
See the distance of the road: from where to where!
My heart has tired of the cloister and the cloak of hypocrisy;
where is the Magians' temple, and where the pure wine?
What kinship has rendi with piety and abstinence?
Where is listening to sermons, and where the music of the rebab?
What can the hearts of enemies grasp of the Friend's face?
Where is a dead lamp, and where the candle of the sun?
Since the collyrium of our sight is the dust of your threshold,
where should we go? Tell us: from this court, where?
Do not gaze at the apple of the chin, for there is a well in the road;
where are you going, O heart, in such a hurry, where?
It is gone, may its memory be sweet, the time of union;
where did that glance of coquetry go, and where that reproach?
Expect no rest or sleep from Hafez, O friend:
what is rest, which is patience, and where is sleep?