Lovely poem of San Juan de la Cruz, set to music by Enrique Morente https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MSSG8h5j5g Translation: Song of the Soul that /delights in knowing God through Faith How well I know the spring, that flows and runs Although it is in the night That eternal spring is hidden How well I know where…
Khaqani on Love
Khaqani Translation: The bird that sings the song of pain is love The courier who knows the tongue of the Unseen is love The existence that calls you to nonexistence is love And that which redeems you from you is love Original: مرغی که نوای درد راند عشق است پيکی که زبان غيب داند…
Nightingale: Keats and Hafez
Hafez sang: بلبلى خون جگر خورد و گلى حاصل كرد باد غيرت به صادش خار پريشان دل كرد طوطيى را به خيال شكرى دل خوش بود ناگهش سيل فنا نقش امل باطل كرد Gertrude Bell’s translation: The nightingale with drops of his heart’s blood Had nourished the red rose, then came a wind, And catching…
Hafez: Minstrel vs. Philosopher
The minstrel played a melody from the pain of love that covered the philosopher’s eyelashes in blood -Hafez Translation: For years I pawned my book for wine, the rowdiness of the tavern was from my teaching and praying See the goodness of the Magian Pīr: Whatever we drunks did was…
The cicada: Camaron and Basho
A cicada shell; it sang itself utterly away. In the cicada’s cry There’s no sign that can foretell How soon it must die. stillness— sinking into the rocks, cicadas’ cry —Barnhill, Bashō’s Haiku, 94, #392 -Basho Camaron Translation: Don’t sing cicada silence your chirping, For I carry a pain in my soul, A…
The hardest thing in the world…
ahh, who hasn’t felt like this… Translation: The hardest thing in the world is studied and learned well I tried to study your love Because I couldn’t understand it, I suffer and cry like a child Before the image of Christ I saw her crying one day Striking her chest because she was repenting…
Andalusian Love Songs: Shushtari and Camaron (part 2)
Translation: You who took my heart from me, your love stole my senses You hid me from myself, and in myself, I don’t appear I’m hidden form my sight, as if I were invisible So I went out to look for me, maybe I’ll find myself… Love of the beautiful, o brother, is my art…
Andalusian Love songs: Shushtari and Camaron
The poems of the Andalusian Sufi, Abu’l-Hasan Shushtari (d. 1269) parallel and perhaps indirectly influenced some of my favorite Flamenco lyrics. Compare this pair of songs: Your love for me is not a fantasy However much they forbid that I love you, like a jib to the water I will resist. Only your tender love…
Deep Songs from Spain
A collection of some lovely Flamenco lyrics The sighs that come from me and those that come from you, if they meet on their way what things they will say! Original: Suspiros que de mí salgan y otros que de ti saldrán, si en el camino se encuentran ¡qué de cosas se dirán! If blood…
Shakespeare, Shushtari, and the Sultan
Sonnet 29 When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself, and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, Desiring this man’s art, and…