“I wish”—
whispers the bottom stair, trod by countless
feet, in the translated words of Hafez,

“I could show you”—
the 14th-century Sufi poet’s
writings about divine love,

“when you are”—
in his birthplace of Shiraz,
he who learned the Quran by heart,

“lonely or”—
whom others called Hafez,
the memorizer, the safe keeper,

“in darkness”—
whose poems have leapt more
than six hundred years into our time,

“the astonishing light”—
accompanying us up and down
the stairs of these earthly lives,

“of your own being”—
always luminous, even when
we can’t see our own shining selves.