The Gift, page 10
The verse of a Perfect One?
Their voices and cells become refined
And like the soft night candle (the moon)
They begin to give to this world
All the light they have
Learned.”
Your hand sits in the classroom
Of God,
An apprentice as Hafiz was,
Mastering the craft of
Divine beauty
As this earth spins on
The Potter’s
Wheel.
I WANT BOTH OF US
I want both of us
To start talking about this great love
As if you, I, and the Sun were all married
And living in a tiny room,
Helping each other to cook,
Do the wash,
Weave and sew,
Care for our beautiful
Animals.
We all leave each morning
To labor on the earth’s field.
No one does not lift a great pack.
I want both of us to start singing like two
Traveling minstrels
About this extraordinary existence
We share,
As if
You, I, and God were all married
And living in
A tiny
Room.
LIKE PASSIONATE LIPS
There are
So many positions of
Love:
Each curve on a branch,
The thousand different ways
Your eyes can embrace us,
The infinite shapes your
Mind can draw,
The spring
Orchestra of scents,
The currents of light combusting
Like passionate lips,
The revolution of Existence’s skirt
Whose folds contain other worlds,
Your every sigh that falls against
His inconceivable
Omnipresent
Body.
CUCUMBERS AND PRAYERS
All day long
The earth shouts
“Gee, thanks.”
Such an exuberant gee,
It starts throwing
Things
As if God were passing by in a parade encouraging
Rowdy behavior
By looking so beautiful—
That a whole avalanche of mania swoops in!
I like this idea of throwing things at God,
And especially—His making us rowdy!
Thus, as soon as Hafiz is out of bed
I start stuffing large sacks
With old shoes, cucumbers,
And
Prayers
For the upcoming
Consecrated
Free-for-all—
And who knows
What else.
FOURTEEN
A Cushion for Your Head
Just sit there right now
Don’t do a thing
Just rest.
For your separation from God,
From love,
Is the hardest work
In this
World.
Let me bring you trays of food
And something
That you like to
Drink.
You can use my soft words
As a cushion
For your
Head.
THESE BEAUTIFUL LOVE GAMES
Young lovers wisely say,
“Let’s try it from this angle,
Maybe something marvelous will happen,
Maybe three suns and two moons
Will roll out
From a hiding place in the body
Our passion has yet to ignite.”
Old lovers say,
“We can do it one more time,
How about from this longitude
And latitude—
Swinging from a rope tied to the ceiling,
Maybe a part of God
Is still hiding in a corner of your heart
Our devotion has yet to reveal.”
Bottom line:
Do not stop playing
These beautiful
Love
Games.
THE BAG LADY
I am the bag lady in every city,
I have a spot on every street.
My sacks are full of holiness
So I have come to peddle,
To touch your feet.
I give Myself
To Myself on rare occasions because
I am so very shy.
Hafiz, the monarchs of this world
Are but slaves to thee
Since the Beloved took His seat
In your eye.
I am the bag lady in every city.
I am playing divine music in every world.
My sacks are full of holiness.
I am asking,
May I please bow
To you.
THE AMBIENCE OF LOVE
We all
Sit in His orchestra,
Some play their
Fiddles,
Some wield their
Clubs.
Tonight is worthy of music.
Let’s get loose
With
Compassion,
Let’s drown in the delicious
Ambience of
Love.
TIRED OF SPEAKING SWEETLY
Love wants to reach out and manhandle us,
Break all our teacup talk of God.
If you had the courage and
Could give the Beloved His choice, some nights,
He would just drag you around the room
By your hair,
Ripping from your grip all those toys in the world
That bring you no joy.
Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly
And wants to rip to shreds
All your erroneous notions of truth
That make you fight within yourself, dear one,
And with others,
Causing the world to weep
On too many fine days.
God wants to manhandle us,
Lock us inside of a tiny room with Himself
And practice His dropkick.
The Beloved sometimes wants
To do us a great favor:
Hold us upside down
And shake all the nonsense out.
But when we hear
He is in such a “playful drunken mood”
Most everyone I know
Quickly packs their bags and hightails it
Out of town.
A ROOT IN EACH ACT AND CREATURE
The sun’s eyes are painting fields again.
Its lashes with expert strokes
Are sweeping across the land.
A great palette of light has embraced
This earth.
Hafiz, if just a little clay and water
Mixed in His bowl
Can yield such exquisite scents, sights,
Music—and whirling forms—
What unspeakable wonders must await with
The commencement of unfolding
Of the infinite number of petals
That are the
Soul.
What excitement will renew your body
When we all begin to see
That His heart resides in
Everything?
God has a root in each act and creature
That He draws His mysterious
Divine life from.
His eyes are painting fields again.
The Beloved with His own hands is tending,
Raising like a precious child,
Himself in
You.
OUR HEARTS SHOULD DO THIS MORE
I sit in the streets with the homeless
My clothes stained with the wine
From the vineyards the saints tend.
Light has painted all acts
The same color
So I sit around and laugh all day
With my friends.
At night if I feel a divine loneliness
I tear the doors off Love’s mansion
And wrestle God onto the floor.
He becomes so pleased with Hafiz
And says,
“Our hearts should do this more.”
TURN LEFT A THOUSAND FEET FROM HERE
What I really want to give you
I can’t,
Yet all day long
I try painting maps on the sky
With bright, tender sounds
That say,
“Turn left a thousand feet from here,
Just past that next hill.
Then make a sharp right
As soon as you see that big rock
That looks like an egg,
There you will find a decent tavern.”
I am like a wise friend.
If you come close to me
I will write down the address
Of the Woman who will ravish you most.
Hafiz never wants to offend,
So in anything I ever say
You can always freely switch the gender.
Come close to me,
I will whisper in your ear
A secret about the One who
Has made us all
Nuts.
IMAGINATION DOES NOT EXIST
You should come close to me tonight wayfarer
For I will be celebrating you.
Your beauty still causes me madness,
Keeps the neighbors complaining
When I start shouting in the middle of the night
Because I can’t bear all this joy.
I will be giving birth to suns.
I will be holding forests upside down
Gently shaking soft animals from trees and burrows
Into my lap.
What you conceive as imagination
Does not exist for me.
Whatever you can do in a dream
Or on your mind-canvas
My hands can pull—alive—from my coat pocket.
But let’s not talk about my divine world,
For what I most want to know
Tonight is:
All about
You.
THROW ME ON A SCALE
Today love has completely gutted me.
I am lying in the market like a
Filleted grouper,
Speechless,
Every desire and sinew absolutely silent
But I am still so fresh.
Everything is now the same to me.
Listen:
The touch of a beautiful woman
As she lifts me near,
Drawing my scent into her body;
She thinks about taking me home.
The touch of a wondrous fly
Drinking my vital fluids
Through a strange shaped flute,
The sun laying its radiant gaze against my cheek,
Human voices and the breeze from a passing
Horse’s tail,
All send miraculous currents into
My world.
God’s beauty has split me wide open.
Throw Hafiz on a scale,
Wrap me in cloth,
Bring me home.
Lift a piece of my knowledge to your lips
So I can melt inside of you
And sing.
THE HATCHECK GIRL
Why
Are there
So few in the court
Of a perfect
Saint?
Because
Every time you are near Him
You have to leave pieces
Of your
Ego
With
The hatcheck
Girl
Who won’t give them
Back—
O
O
O
U
C
H
DAMN THIRSTY
First
The fish needs to say,
“Something ain’t right about this
Camel ride—
And I’m
Feeling so damn
Thirsty.”
FIFTEEN
Two Giant Fat People
God
And I have become
Like two giant fat people
Living in a
Tiny boat.
We
Keep
Bumping into each other and
L
a
u
g
h
i
n
g
SCRATCHING MY BACK
You
Can think of Hafiz as a divine
Old dog
Who just keeps scratching his back
On the Moon.
O, I don’t care about your thoughts
Or what you have ever done,
Just open up this book whenever you are
Sad
For I love the way you
Smile!
IF YOU DON’T STOP THAT
I used to live in
A cramped house with confusion
And pain.
But then I met the Friend
And started getting drunk
And singing all
Night.
Confusion and pain
Started acting nasty,
Making threats,
With talk like this,
“If you don’t stop ‘that’—
All that fun—
We’re
Leaving.”
ELEGANCE
It
Is not easy
To stop thinking ill
Of others.
Usually one must enter into a friendship
With a person
Who has accomplished that great feat himself.
Then
Something
Might start to rub off on you
Of that
True
Elegance.
A HOLE IN A FLUTE
I am
A hole in a flute
That the Christ’s breath moves through—
Listen to this
Music.
I am the concert
From the mouth of every
Creature
Singing with the myriad
Chords.
UNTIL
I think we are frightened every
Moment of our lives
Until we
Know
