The Gift, page 6
Seen You heal
A hundred deep wounds with one glance
From Your spectacular eyes,
While your hands, beneath the table,
Pour large bags of salt into the heart-gashes
Of Your most loyal servants.
Dear world, I can offer
An intelligent explanation
For our suffering,
But I hope it really makes sense
To no one here,
And come morning,
You are again at God’s door
With ax and pickets,
Eloquent petitions and complaints.
Think of suffering as being washed.
That is to say,
Hafiz, you are often completely soaked
And dripping.
The only advantage I can see in this
In the Friend’s long-range plan
Is that when the Beloved bursts
Into ecstatic flames
This whole world will not turn into
A bright oil wick all at once,
Then divine ash,
And ruin His
Winter
Crop.
THE SCENT OF LIGHT
Like a great starving beast
My body is quivering
Fixed
On the scent
Of
Light.
NO CONFLICT
No
Conflict
When the flute is playing
For then I see every movement emanates
From God’s
Holy
Dance.
STOP CALLING MEA PREGNANT WOMAN
My Master once entered a phase
That whenever I would see him
He would say,
“Hafiz,
How did you ever become a pregnant woman?”
And I would reply,
“Dear Attar,
You must be speaking the truth,
But all of what you say is a mystery to me.”
Many months passed by in his blessed company.
But one day I lost my patience
Upon hearing that odd refrain
And blurted out,
“Stop calling me a pregnant woman!”
And Attar replied,
“Someday, my sweet Hafiz,
All the nonsense in your brain will dry up
Like a stagnant pool of water
Beneath the sun,
Though if you want to know the Truth
I can so clearly see that God has made love with you
And the whole universe is germinating
Inside your belly
And wonderful words,
Such enlightening words
Will take birth from you
And be cradled against thousands
Of hearts.”
A STRANGE FEATHER
All
The craziness,
All the empty plots,
All the ghosts and fears,
All the grudges and sorrows have
Now
Passed.
I must have inhaled
A strange
Feather
That finally
Fell
Out.
SEVEN
I Am Really Just a Tambourine
Good
Poetry
Makes the universe admit a
Secret:
“I am
Really just a tambourine,
Grab hold,
Play me
Against your warm
Thigh.”
THE STAIRWAY OF EXISTENCE
We
Are not
In pursuit of formalities
Or fake religious
Laws,
For through the stairway of existence
We have come to God’s
Door.
We are
People who need to love, because
Love is the soul’s life,
Love is simply creation’s greatest joy.
Through
The stairway of existence,
O, through the stairway of existence, Hafiz,
Have
You now come,
Have we all now come to
The Beloved’s
Door.
WHAT DO WHITE BIRDS SAY
The earth has disappeared beneath my feet,
It fled from all my ecstasy,
Now like a singing air creature
I feel the Rose
Keep opening.
My heart turned to effulgent wings.
When has love not given freedom?
When has adoration not made one free?
A woman broken in tears and sweat
Stands in a field
Watching the sun and me
Trade jokes.
But never would Hafiz laugh
At your blessed labor
Of finding peace.
What do the dancing white birds say
Looking down upon burnt meadows?
All that you think is rain is not.
Behind the veil Hafiz and angels sometimes weep
Because most eyes are rarely glad
And your divine beauty is still too frightened
To unfurl its thousand swaying arms.
The earth has disappeared beneath my feet,
Illusion fled from all my ecstasy.
Now like a radiant sky creature
God keeps opening,
God keeps opening
Inside of
Me.
HOW DO ILISTEN?
How
Do I
Listen to others?
As if everyone were my Master
Speaking to me
His
Cherished
Last
Words.
THE EARTH BRACES IT SELF
The earth braces itself for the feet
Of a lover of God about to
Dance.
The sky becomes very timid
When a great saint starts waving his arms
In joy,
For the sky knows its prized fixtures,
The sun, moon and planets
Could all wind up
Rolling so wild on the floor!
My dear, this world, its laws,
Our perceptions,
Are such a minute part of existence.
Should not all of our suffering and sadness
Be like this:
As just dropped from an infant’s palm
That is asleep against the breast
Of God?
The earth braces itself for the feet of Hafiz.
The sky pulls a mirror from its pocket
And is practicing looking
Coy,
For the Beloved has at last
Opened His arms
And is inviting my heart to eternally
Dance!
The day candle (sun) has forgotten the hour;
The whole world has gone joyously mad.
Look,
The Sun’s sweet cheeks are blushing
In the middle of the night
Desiring the rampage of the feet
Of God’s lovers.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN
A saintly man and a Perfect One both resided on the
Outskirts of a beautiful city,
Though several miles apart.
One day it came to the attention
Of these two households that a visiting prince
Desired to pay his respects to the most revered spiritual
Leader in that province,
Wanting to gift a small fortune to that man
To help further God’s work.
As there had for years been some question
Amongst the population who in fact was
The most spiritual of these two figures,
The prince devised something of a contest,
As he only had time to visit
One of these personages.
The prince sent word:
“In three days I would like to meet with,
In my quarters, the chief representative of each
Of these two renowned religious men
And after questioning them extensively
I and my ministers will then determine
Who in fact of their teachers is the
Closer to God, and thus
To whom we will gift God’s own bounty.”
The saint upon receiving this news met with
All his close ones. This council discussed the situation
For hours, exploring every nuance,
And considering how much this gold could mean to them.
Then, with a clear majority vote—
Ramjoo was chosen.
Ramjoo was a strikingly young handsome man,
A great hunter, a legendary warrior, a renowned artist.
His intellect was superb, his manners impeccable,
He spoke twenty different languages
And was descended from royal blood himself—
A great-aunt was a queen.
Someone in the saint’s camp also knew this prince
Enjoyed the intimate company of men as well as women.
Ramjoo, they all nodded, was the right choice.
The Perfect One upon receiving this “news”
From the prince immediately called for Yasamin;
No consultation with anyone was needed.
Yasamin was a servant woman in the master’s
Household.
She was nearly eighty, a famous hag,
And had worked for him all her life—
No one else in the city would hire Yasamin
As she was completely mad
(Perhaps just God-mad), nevertheless her qualifications
For this essential, delicate diplomacy were exact:
She had not combed her hair or bathed for months;
She mostly muttered unintelligible sounds
In her own secret language
That only the master knew.
She often made obscene gestures
While exposing her private regions.
She compulsively picked her nose
And threw boogers with astounding accuracy.
No one had ever known her to go five minutes
Without loudly farting at least four times.
She was psychic, too,
And would probably start beating the prince if
She “saw” he had ever gone too far romantically—
With his camels.
Yasamin, the Perfect One knew,
Was the right choice to be his envoy
Especially when she agreed with a deep enlightened laugh
To add to her already majestic—sublimely free—being
The crown of three live chickens
She would proudly drape over her head
Come the appointed
Royal minute.
The day of the prince came. The two envoys entered
The prince’s quarters but were kept separate
And did not even see one another.
Ramjoo went in first
And from behind a door Yasamin could hear singing,
And light lively talk that went on for two hours.
She knew what was happening.
The prince was falling in love with his new guest.
Then Yasamin was brought in
And the prince could not believe his eyes.
He felt tremendously insulted and even became
A bit terrified when, in fact, Yasamin being
Able to “see” into the prince’s past,
Started shouting things even he could understand
About that one regrettable night in the desert—
With that young, gorgeous camel.
She even hit the prince with two gigantic boogers
From twenty feet away;
Bouncing off his forehead
They both fell right into his tea.
Yasamin was ordered
Beaten and thrown out.
She returned to the master ecstatic
And has never been happier since.
That night the prince could not sleep, but
Finally dozed off for a few minutes just before dawn.
During that short sleep he had this dream:
The Prophet Muhammad
Was seated on a magnificent white horse
And behind the Prophet sat a man smiling wonderfully
At the prince for a moment, before saying,
“Why did you beat my dear Yasamin,
When she spoke only the truth to you?”
The prince bolted awake
And sat up in bed trembling with sweat.
He called for his horse to be saddled
And with ten of his soldiers rode right then
To the saintly man’s house pleading to see him.
Upon seeing this man and realizing
He was not the person in the dream,
He then dismissed his soldiers and taking off his shoes,
Weeping now,
Began to walk to the Perfect One’s household.
Dear ones,
Use your own storytelling abilities
To end this tale
In a way that will most
Uplift your heart.
THE ANGELS KNOW YOU WELL
You have fathered a child with me.
You had your night of fun.
If You no longer want the love my
Beautiful body can yield
At least take care of that
Holy infant my heart has become.
God, You sired an heir with me
When You gave birth to my soul.
I thought of complaining to all the angels
Last night
About Your treatment of this
“Homeless child,”
But then I remembered they too
Have a long list of love-complaints
Because
They also know You so
Well.
CROOKED DEALS
There is
A madman inside of you
Who is always running for office—
Why vote him in,
For he never keeps the accounts straight.
He gets all kinds of crooked deals
Happening all over town
That will just give you a big headache
And glue to your kisser
A gigantic
Confused
Frown.
THE MILLSTONE‘S TALENTS
To the heart’s deepest sensibilities
Only the God who created every god
Dares to sing.
In the Tavern
Where the Friend performs
I am amazed
For
There are often vacant seats at night
And the old chairs miss their free dusting
By big, warm rear ends.
The husk on the grain
Needs the Millstone’s talents
Before the Royal Eye’s intelligence can cure
Life,
And one can see, See, see that God is everywhere And whirling.
