His Wine Heals

Lesson 319: His Wine Heals

Keep your feasts and your ranks, your brilliances and your talk,
Keep your lion and your burning bush;
I want only my gazelle of Tartary.
He has destroyed me, given me life, stripped me of heart and hands;
He pours me wine, makes me drunk.
He is the assassin who breaks my bones;
He is the cupbearer whose wine heals all agony.

- Jalal-ud-Din Rumi

(Translated by Andrew Harvey from A Year of Rumi)