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…
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…
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…
Camarón and Persian Poetry- “Nothing is Eternal” and “The Cicada”
Sarmad The universe is a kaleidoscope: now hopelessness, now hope now spring, now fall. Forget its ups and downs: do not vex yourself: The remedy for pain is the pain. Translation by Peter Lamborn Wilson and Nasrollah Pourjavady Translation: Punishment replaces punishment and one pain removes another a nail takes out…
Camaron, Me, and ‘Attar
El Padre Santo de Roma Translation: Lailolailolailo, Leilo … Holy Father in Rome, I have to ask if the sins that I have if the sins I have, if the sins I have, can they be forgiven? I’m like a sad bird that goes from branch to branch, singing its suffering, singing its suffering,…
Tangos of the Willows
Yo pienso como el cipres Translation: I will be like the willow, I will be like the willow, though I last one hundred years, I will be like the willow, that sways in the air, but remains firm, but remains firm. I think like the cypress, I think like the cypress, the truest…