A song wink aligned me with joy
And a tune I came to know hums paradise.
– Hafiz, Persian poet
Shams-ud-din Muhammad Hafiz (1320 – 1389), better known as Hafiz, is a beloved poet among the ancient Persians, and one of the world’s great lyrical geniuses. His collected works, numbering over 5,000 poems, are regarded as a pinnacle of Persian literature and treasured by people in the Persian-speaking world who learn his poems by heart and use them as proverbs and aphorism. Though he is little known in the West, many literary notables, include Ralph Waldo Emerson and Johann Wolfgang Goethe have high regards for Hafiz. Emerson considered Hafiz as “the poet for poets”. while Johann Wolfgang Goethe wrote that “Hafiz has no peers”.
The range of Hafiz’s work is astounding; he wrote love poems, spiritual poems, critical poems exposing hypocrisy and “fun” poems about ordinary aspects of life in equal measure, all expressing the ecstasy of divine inspiration in the affairs of man. In a hundred different ways, his poems prompt reflection on what prevents us from living a more fulfilled life. They lead us to a place where we can breathe easier and say, “ah, this world isn’t so bad after all.”
Love Poems
OUR UNION
Our union
is like this:
You feel cold
so I reach for a blanket
to cover our shivering feet.
A hunger comes into your body
so I run to my garden
and start digging potatoes.
You asked for a few words of comfort and guidance
and I quickly kneel by your side
offering you
a whole book as a gift.
You ache with loneliness one night so much
you weep
and I say,
here is a rope, tie it around me.
Hafiz will be your
companion
for life.
TROUBLED?
Troubled?
Then stay with me, for I am not.
Lonely?
A thousand naked amorous ones
dwell in ancient caves
beneath my eyelids.
Riches?
my whole body is an emerald that begs,
“Take me”
Write all that worries you on a piece of parchment;
offer it to God.
Even from the distance of a millennium
I can lean the flame in my heart
into your life,
and turn all that frightens you
into holy ash.
THE SUN NEVER SAYS
Even after all this time
the sun never says to the earth,
“You owe me.”
Look what happens
with a love like that –
It lights the whole world!
Spiritual Poems
THE CHRIST’S BREATH
I am
a hole in a flute
that the Christ’s breath moves through –
listen to
this music.
I HAVE COME INTO THIS WORLD TO HEAR THIS
I have come into this world to hear this:
Every song the earth
since it was conceived
in the Divine’s womb
and began spinning from His wish.
Every song by wing and fin and hoof,
every song by hill and field and tree
and woman and child,
every song of stream and rock
every song of tool and lyre and flute,
every song of gold and emerald and fire.
Every song the heart should cry
with magnificent dignity
to know itself as God.
THE REINS OF GOD
The rein of God says to His lover,
“Hold me in your mouth, dear
as you toil with all your limbs and strength
to free the magnificence in man.”
The reins of the Sky sing,
“Grab hold, and you will know God
lowers his cup into you
to drink.