My little flask

Ye Jamsheds who hold the Earth in fee

Your cups belie ecstasy.

Tho' Khayyam's songs the Heavens scry

That Galaxy is wrong in which we die.

My little flask

You only ask

That her to view

I empty you.

Thirsty is the lip o' the tilth

Sehra's tongue for Khizr's filth

Did the Saqi depart to seal its doom?

Or are my eyes now their own simoom?

Little flask, why

Do you empty lie?

She isn't here
Nor was ever near.

In the Stars' Wine Cup, the Sun casts its stone

Shadows forsake us, themselves forlorn

The world is the prayer mat on which Muezza sat

Couldn't the Prophet shoo a sleepy cat?

Why in these wastes did you let go my hand?

My little flask filling up with sand

Will you with the desert's advancing dunes

Hunt the gazelle with goliard tunes?

Or, like the Sphinx enclosed at Sehra's heart

Practice yet the Saqi's art?

Self mutilation is the only Sin

Yet how else heed the Muezzin?

Envoi- 

Prince! Tho' savants thrill thy Cup to task

Happier yet my little flask.