Stay with Us

You
Leave
Our company when you speak
Of shame

And this makes
Everyone in the Tavern sad.

Stay with us
As we do the hardest work of rarely
Laying down
That pick and
Shovel

That will keep
Revealing our deeper kinship
With
God,

That will keep revealing
Our own divine
Worth.

You leave the company of the Beloved's friends
Whenever you speak of
Guilt,

And this makes
Everyone in the Tavern
Very sad.

Stay with us tonight
As we weave love

And reveal ourselves,
Reveal ourselves

As His precious
Garments.

'The Gift - Poems by Hafiz The Great Sufi Master'
Translations by Daniel Ladinsky

I saw you dancing
Hafiz

I saw you dancing last night on the roof
Of your house all alone.

I felt your heart longing for the
Friend.

I saw you whirling
Beneath the soft bright rose
That hung from an invisible stem in
The sky,

So I began to change into my best clothes
In hopes of joining you

Even though
I live a thousand miles away.

And if
You had spun like an immaculate sphere
Just two more times,

Then bowed again so sweetly to
The east,

You would have found God and me
Standing so near
And lifting you into our
Arms.

I saw you dancing last night near the roof
Of this world.

Hafiz feels your soul in mine
Calling for our
Beloved.

'The subject tonight is love' - versions by Daniel Ladinsky

I Am Full Of Love Tonight

I am full of love tonight

Come look into my eyes, and let's go off

Sailing, my dear, on a long ocean ride.

This world will not touch you,

I will keep you snug upon my seat.

Let's plot

To make the moon jealous

With a radiance leaping from your cheek.

I will be full of love tonight,

Come look into these ancient eyes!

And let's go off sailing, my dear,

With our spirits intertwined.

Your body is just an old sandbar

In a speeding hourglass of time.

Love will turn the mouth of sorrow

Right side up.

Let your heart commence its destined

Laughing chime!

Hafiz will be brimful of love tonight,

Why ever be shy?

Come look into the playful eyes of my verse,

They are eternally branded,

Branded with

The Sun!

'The Gift - Poems by Hafiz The Great Sufi Master'

Translations by Daniel Ladinsky

After Being In Love, The Next Responsibility

Turn me like a waterwheel turning a millstone.

Plenty of water, a Living River.

Keep me in one place and scatter the love.

Leaf-moves in wind, straw drawn toward amber,

all parts of the world are in love,

but they do not tell their secrets. Cows grazing

on a sacramental table, ants whispering in Solomon's ear.

Mountains mumbling an echo. Sky, calm.

If the sun were not in love, he would have no brightness,

the side of the hill no grass on it.

The ocean would come to rest somewhere.

Be a lover as they are, that you come to know

you Beloved. Be faithful that you may know

Faith. The other parts of the universe did not accept

the next responsibility of love as you can.

They were afraid they might make a mistake

with it, the inspired knowing

that springs from being in love

Furuzanfar #2674 translated by Coleman Barks

'The Rumi Collection' edited by Kabir Helminski

Silence

A day of Silence

Can be a pilgrimage in itself.

A day of Silence

Can help you listen

To the Soul play

It's marvelous lute and drum.

Is not most talking

A crazed defense of a crumbling fort?

I thought we came her

To surrender in Silence,

To yield to Light and Happiness,

To Dance within

In celebration of Love's Victory!

~Hafiz

'I Heard God Laughing' Daniel Ladinsky

Ode 3079

            We've come again to that knee of seacoast

            no ocean can reach.

            Tie together all human intellects.

            They won't stretch to here.

            The sky bares its neck so beautifully,

            but gets no kiss. Only a taste.

            This is the food that everyone wants,

            wandering the wilderness, "Please give us

            Your manna and quail."

            We're here again with the Beloved.

            This air, a shout. These meadowsounds,

            an astonishing myth.

            We've come into the Presence of the One

            who was never apart from us.

            When the waterbag is filling, you know

            the Water-carrier's here!

            The bag leans lovingly against Your shoulder.

            "Without You I have no knowledge,

            no way to touch anyone."

            When someone chews sugarcane,

            he's wanting this Sweetness.

            Inside this globe the soul roars like thunder.

            And now Silence, my strict tutor.

            I won't try to talk about Shams.

            Language cannot touch that Presence.

            Rumi

            'Like this' Versions by Coleman Barks

By love, bitter things are made sweet and copper turns to gold.

By love, the sediment becomes clear and torment is removed.

By love, the dead are made to live.

By love, the sovereign is made a slave.

This love is the fruit of knowledge.

When did folly sit on a throne like this?

The faith of love is separated from all religion.

For lovers the faith and the religion is God.

O spirit, in striving and seeking become like running water.

O reason, at all times be ready to give up mortality

for the sake of immortality.

Remember God always, that self may be forgotten,

so that yourself may be effaced in the One to Whom you pray,

without care for who is praying, or the prayer.

~ Rumi

Quoted in 'Essential Sufism' Fadiman/Frager

Wayfarer

Hafiz

Wayfarer,

Your whole mind and body have been tied

To the foot of the Divine Elephant

With a thousand golden chains.

Now, begin to rain intelligence and compassion

Upon all your tender, wounded cells

And realize the profound absurdity

Of thinking

That you can ever go Anywhere

Or do Anything

Without God's will.

 'I Heard God Laughing - Renderings of Hafiz'

by Daniel Ladinsky

A New World

Let's offer flowers, pour a cup of libation,

split open the skies and start anew on creation.

If the forces of grief invade our lovers' veins,

cupbearer and I will wash away this temptation.

With rose water we'll mellow crimson wine's bitter cup;

we'll sugar the fire to sweeten smoke's emanation.

Take this fine lyre, musician, strike up a love song;

let's dance, sing all night, go wild in celebration.

As dust, 0 West Wind, let us rise to the Heavens,

floating free in Creator's glow of elation.

If mind desires to return while heart cries to stay,

here's a quarrel for love's deliberation.

Alas, these words and songs go for naught in this land;

come, Hafez, let's create a new generation.

From: 'The Spiritual Wisdom of Hafez'

Haleh Pourafzal and Roger Montgomery

Prelude

Rainer Maria Rilke

Whoever you are: at evening step forth

out of your room, where all is known to you;

last thing before the distance lies your house:

whoever you are.

With your eyes, which wearily

scarce from the much-worn threshold free themselves,

you lift quite slowly a black tree

and place it against the sky: slender, alone.

And you have made the world. And it is large

and like a word that yet in silence ripens.

And as your will takes in the sense of it,

tenderly your eyes let it go . . .

The Book of Pictures

'Translations from the Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke'

Translation by M. D. Herter Norton

The Earth-My Own Body I Explored

Mirabai

One night as I walked in the desert

the mountains rode on my

shoulders

and the sky became my heart,

and the earth-my own body, I explored.

Every object began to wink at me, and Mira wisely

calculated the situation, thinking:

My charms must be at

their height-

now would be a good time to

rush into His

arms,

maybe He won't drop me

so quick.

From 'Love Poems From God - Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West'

Daniel Ladinsky

Poem Without A Category

Gensei

Trailing my stick I go down to the garden edge,

call to a monk to go out the pine gate.

A cup of tea with my mother,

looking at each other, enjoying our tea together.

In the deep lanes, few people in sight;

the dog barks when anyone comes or goes.

Fall floods have washed away the planks of the bridge;

shouldering our sandals, we wade the narrow stream.

By the roadside, a small pavilion

where there used to be a little hill:

it helps out our hermit mood;

country poems pile one sheet on another.

I dabble in the flow, delighted by the shallowness of the stream,

gaze at the flagging, admiring how firm the stones are.

The point in life is to know what's enough -

why envy those otherworld immortals?

With the happiness held in one inch-square heart

you can fill the whole space between heaven and earth.

Translated by Burton Watson

From 'The Enlightened Heart'

Edited by Stephen Mitchell

All the Fruit

Friedrich Holderlin

All the fruit is ripe, plunged in fire, cooked,

And they have passed their test on earth, and one law is this:

That everything curls inwards like snakes,

Prophetic, dreaming on

The hills of heaven. And many things

Have to stay on the shoulders like a load

Of failure. However the roads

Are bad. For the chained elements,

Like horses, are going off to the side,

And the old

Laws of the earth. And a longing

For disintegration constantly comes. Many things however

Have to stay on the shoulders. Steadiness is essential.

Forwards, however, or backwards we will

Not look. Let us learn to live swaying

As in a rocking boat on the sea.

Translated by Robert Bly

From 'The Soul is Here for Its Own Joy'

Edited by Robert Bly

What is this thing?

Within this shell I permeate.

Colourless, odourless,

Yet dreadful power lies at hand.

There, you see the sun.

That also is mine.

I too radiate so much light yet

I see nothing.

And you ask

“Who are you?”

There is no beginning

That can be told.

That river just flowed away.

Abichal