SpiritAwake

Hafiz

(Originally rendered by Daniel Ladinsky)

Forgive the Dream

All your images of winter
I see against your sky.

I understand the wounds
That have not healed in you.

They exist
Because God and Love
Have yet to become real enough
To allow you to forgive
The dream.

You still listen to an old alley song
That brings your body pain;
Now chain your ears
To His pacing drum and flute.

Fix your eyes upon
The magnificent arch of His brow
That supports
And allows this universe to expand.

Your hands, feet, and heart are wise
And want to know the warmth
Of a Perfect One’s circle.

A true saint
Is an earth in eternal spring.

Inside the veins of a petal
On a blooming redbud tree
Are hidden worlds
Where Hafiz sometimes
Resides.

I will spread
A Persian carpet there
Woven with light.

We can drink wine
From a gourd I hollowed
And dried on the roof of my house.

I will bring bread I have kneaded
That contains my own
Divine genes
And cheese from a calf I raised.

My love for your Master is such
You can just lean back
And I will feed you
This truth:

Your wounds of love can only heal
When you can forgive
This dream.

—
A Crystal Rim

The
Earth
Lifts its glass to the sun
And Light
Is poured.

A bird
Comes and sits on a crystal rim
And from my forest cave I
Hear singing.

So I run to the edge of Existence
And join my soul in Love.

I lift my heart to God
And Grace is poured.

An emerald bird rises from inside me
And now sits
Upon the Beloved’s
Glass.

I have left that dark cave forever.
My being has blended with His.

I lay my wing
As a bridge to you

So that you can join us
Singing.

—
A Still Cup

For God
To pour Love,
For divine alchemy to work,
A still cup is needed.
Why ask Hafiz to say
Anything more about
Your most vital
Requirement?

—
An Astronomical Question

What
Would
Happen if God leaned down

And gave you a full wet
Kiss?

Hafiz
Doesn’t mind answering astronomical questions
Like that:

You would surely start
Reciting all day, inebriated,

Rogue-poems
Like
This.

—
Covers Her Face with Both Hands

What
We speak
Becomes the house we live in.

Who will want to sleep in your bed
If the roof leaks
Right above It?

Look what happens when the tongue
Cannot say to kindness,
“I will be your slave.”

The moon
Covers her face with both hands
And can’t bear
To look.

—
How Could a Lover Fall?

What could have ever caused your grip to weaken
That allowed a world of separation to be?

How could a beloved ever fall to her death
From the arms of infinite
Strength?

How powerfully You call within the
Mind that believes it is a great wall
Casting a frightening shadow
The world believes.

No One has ever known sadness.
No true God
Would ever allow pain.

How can any Heart feel broken and in need
When we are all held in the arms of infinite
Compassion and Strength?

This mirror God stands before
We are called to gaze into.

Divine Love tell me
That name you called
As I fell from your lips.

I suffer
because I did not quite
hear it.

Tell me again dear One
So I can remember that

I Am
You.

—
Today

I do not
Want to step so quickly
Over a beautiful line on God’s palm
As I move through the earth’s
Marketplace
Today.

I do not want to touch any object in this world
Without my eyes testifying to the Truth
That everything is
My Beloved.

Something has happened
To my understanding of existence
That now makes my heart always full of wonder
And kindness.

I do not
Want to step so quickly
Over this sacred place on God’s body
That is right beneath your
Own foot

As I
Dance with
Precious Life
Today.

—
If The Falling of a Hoof

If the falling of a hoof
Ever rings the temple bells,

If a lonely man’s final scream
Before he hangs himself

And the nightingale’s perfect lyric
Of happiness
All become an equal cause to dance,

Then the Sun has at last parted
Its curtain before you—

God has stopped playing child’s games
With your mind
And dragged you backstage by
The hair,

Shown to you the only possible
Reason

For this bizarre and spectacular
Existence.

Go running through the streets
Creating divine chaos,

Make everyone and yourself ecstatically mad
For the Friend’s beautiful open arms.

Go running through this world
Giving love, giving love,

If the falling of a hoof upon this earth
Ever rings the
Temple
Bell.

—
The Quintessence of Loneliness

I am like a heroin addict
In my longing for a sublime state,

For that ground of Conscious Nothing
Where the Rose ever
Blooms.

0, the Friend
Has done me a great favor
And has so thoroughly ruined my life,

What else would you expect
Seeing God would do!

Out of the ashes of this broken frame
There is a noble rising son pining for death,
Because,

Since we first met, Beloved,
I have become a foreigner
To every world
Except that one
In which there is only You
Or – Me.

Now that the heart has held
That which can never be touched
My subsistence is a blessed
Desolation

And from that I cry for more loneliness.

I am lonely.
I am so lonely, dear Beloved,
For the quintessence of
Loneliness,

For what is more alone than God?

Hafiz,
What is more pure and alone,

Magnificently Sovereign,
Than God.