https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs1StI9E71M Translation: Show your face, for the orchard and rose garden is what I long for Open your lips, for heaps of sugar are what I long for O Sun of beauty, come out of the cloud for a moment For that shining, radiant face is what I long for From your air, I…
Between you and me…
al-Ḥallāj Translation: Is it you or me? In this there are two gods yet You forbid, You forbid affirming duality Your selfhood is in my negation eternally My all clothes the all in two respects So where is your self [hidden] from me when I see? For my self became clear where there’s no…
The Iwan of Chosroes
The Iwan of Chosroes in Iraq is the only visible structure remaining of the Sassanid capital of Ctesphion (Madā’in in Arabic), about 35 km south of present-day Baghdad. Its Iwan, or arch, the largest vault of unreinforced brickwork in the world, is considered an architectural marvel. Possibly constructed during the reign of Anushirwan (Chosroes I)…
Words of Bewilderment…
Say: My Lord increase me in knowledge! قل ربّي زدني علماً Quran 20:114 My Lord increase me in bewilderment in Thee! ربّي زدني فيك تحيراً -Saying of the Prophet Muḥammad Rumi Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment for cleverness is mere opinion and bewilderment is vision. زیرکی بفروش و حیرانی بخر زیرکی ظنست و…
Night
“The Night” by Henry Vaughan … There is in God, some say, A deep but dazzling darkness, as men here Say it is late and dusky, because they See not all clear. O for that night! where I in Him Might live invisible and dim!…
When I die—Rumi and al-Ghazali
Two of the most beautiful death-bed poems from two great Sufis. I pray to live in such a way that someone will recite these at my burial. Rumi Translation: When my bier moveth on the day of death Think not my heart is in this world. Do not weep for me and cry “woe, woe!”…
Rumi—Awake! Enter the Cave!
Translation: Awake, awake, the time has come, awake! Without union with him, forsake yourself, forsake! The heavenly decree has arrived, the healer of lovers has arrived, If you want him to visit you, become sick, become sick! Without a trace, without a doubt, he’ll make you rosy-faced He’ll pluck out the thorn from you hand,…
What is this drunkeness?
A current favorite Ghazal of Hafez, a sublime wedding of melody and meanings Translation: I known not what this drunkenness is that to us he brought and who is the Saqi and from where is this wine that he brought? What tune is this musician playing so skillfully that in the midst of his song,…
Thank God the tavern is open
One of Hafez’s most musical and delightful ghazals: Translation: Thank God the tavern door is finally open for I’ve pressed my face to its door in need The wine vats are gushing and roaring drunk And that wine here is real and not metaphorical He is all drunkenness, pride, and arrogance we are all…
Poems on Hafez’s tomb
Hafez’s tomb was first constructed in 1452, around sixty years after his death by the Timurid governor of Shiraz, and has been renovated and expanded many times since, often in response to divination performed with his Divan. The tomb is adorned with calligraphic renditions of these ghazals of his, which happen to be among my…