A Poem By HAFIZ (1320-1389)

Every

child

has known God.

Not the God of names.

Not the God of don'ts.

Not the God who ever does

anything weird.

But the God who only knows four words

and keeps repeating them

saying

Come dance with me.

Come

dance.

UPDATE: At the request of my good blogger buddy Sage, I will give you a little bit of a background on Hafiz. I will start by saying that Hafiz is probably my all-time favorite poet, not merely because he writes about his love for God, but because his poems are filled with life, love, and Humor (with a capital 'H'!). I once stayed up all night reading a new translation of his works titled The Gift:, by Daniel Ladinsky. Here's a bit of the biography of Hafiz found on the very first page of this magical book:

Hafiz (c.1320-1389) is the most beloved poet of Persia. Born in Shiraz, he lived at about the same time as Chaucer in England and about one hundred years after Rumi. He spent nearly all of his life in Shiraz, where he became a famous Sufi master. When he died he was thought to have written an estimated 5,000 poems, of which 500 to 700 have survived. His Divan (collected poems) is a classic in the literature of Sufism. The work of Hafiz became known to the West largely through the efforts of Goethe, whose enthusiasm rubbed off on Ralph Waldo Emerson, who translated Hafiz in the nineteenth century. Hafiz's poems were also admired by such diverse writers as Nietzsche, Pushkin, Turgenev, Carlyle, and Carcia Lorca; even Sherlock Holmes quotes Hafiz in one of the stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. In 1923, Hazrat Inayat Khan, the Indian teacher often credited with bringing Sufism to the West, proclaimed that 'the words of Hafiz have won every heart that listens."

Now that I have the book in my hands again, I will post another one of my favorites:

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

.

I hope that Daniel Ladinsky will accept a link from his book title to Amazon.com as payment enough for using his translations on my site. I feel confident that Mr. Ladinsky will be tickled that many people are being exposed to Hafiz through his translations on this blog! :)

Tags:

Hafiz, poetry, spirituality