The Mirror of the Cup: Reflections on a Ghazal by Hafez Shirazi

Among Hafez’s many love songs, few shimmer as brightly as this ghazal, a meditation on reflection, illusion, and the mystery of love. Each verse turns like a mirror, catching the light of beauty and showing us not the truth itself, but the thousand forms it takes in the dreaming heart.

1. عکسِ رویِ تو چو در آینهٔ جام افتاد / عارف از خندهٔ مِی در طمعِ خام افتاد

When your face appeared in the mirror of the wine cup,
the mystic, deceived by joy, fell into foolish longing.

Hafez begins where vision and intoxication meet. The wine cup, that ancient vessel of divine ecstasy, reflects the beloved’s face. The mystic, seeing that image, forgets the distance between reflection and reality. The laughter of wine, that sudden warmth in the soul, tricks him into chasing what cannot be possessed.
In that mirror of the heart, beauty appears for an instant, and the seeker mistakes the shimmer for the source.

2. حُسن رویِ تو به یک جلوه که در آینه کرد / این همه نقش در آیینهٔ اوهام افتاد

When your beauty flashed once in the mirror,
so many images fell into the mirror of imagination.

A single glimpse of divine beauty births countless forms. The world itself becomes a gallery of reflections, every face, every color, every sound, a trace of that one unseen radiance.
Hafez reminds us that all creation is a mirror in which the Beloved’s face has shone for a moment. Everything we love is a memory of …