Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,
I hope you did like our first episode of March 2017. This month we will explore the beauty of Persian poetry and especially the poetry by the renown poets Rumi, Hafez (or Hafiz) and Saadi. Yesterday we started with two beautiful poems by Rumi, one of them the name-giver of this month "praise to the emptiness".
Today I have a beautiful poem by Hafez (or Hafiz) for you. Hafez is the most loved poet of Persia, nowadays Iran. Every Iranian can recite his poems and they often use his poem to find an answer on burning questions they have. How does this work? Well ... they pick up one of Hafez's bundles of poetry, ask their question in their mind and than rush through the poem bundle. Than on intuition they stop and than they hope to find their answer in the poem they open up. A strange way to find your answer, but if I can believe the Iranian people ... they always find their answer and try to cope with it and bring it into their lives.
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| Hafez (or Hafiz) renown Persian poet and mystic (1326-1390) |
Hafiz, a Sufi poet, expressed in poetry love for the divine, and the intoxicating oneness of union with it. Hafiz, along with many Sufi masters, uses wine as the symbol for love. The intoxication that results from both is why it is such a fitting comparison. Hafiz spoke out about the hypocrisy and deceit that exists in society, and was more outspoken in pointing this out than many poets similar to him.
hafez has written a lot of poems in which he talks about the divine and love, but also full of wisdom. Today I love to challenge you with the following poem by Hafez:
This poem is titled "all the hemispheres":
Leave the familiar for a while.
Let your senses and bodies stretch out
Like a welcomed season
Onto the meadows and shores and hills.
Open up to the Roof.
Make a new watermark on your excitement
And love.
Like a blooming night flower,
Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness
And giving
Upon our intimate assembly.
Change rooms in your mind for a day.
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| Poppies in the late evening / early night (found on flickr) |
All the hemispheres in existence
Lie beside an equator
In your heart.
Greet Yourself
In your thousand other forms
As you mount the hidden tide and travel
Back home.
All the hemispheres in heaven
Are sitting around a fire
Chatting
While stitching themselves together
Into the Great Circle inside of
You.
© Hafez (From: 'The Subject Tonight is Love', tr. Daniel Ladinsky)
I didn't say to much I think. This is really a wonderfully crafted poem by Hafez. Will not be an easy task to come up with a haiku or tanka inspired or distilled from this poem.
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| Moonflower or Ipomoea - alba |
Here is my attempt:
like a nightflower
I stretch towards the moon
she ... the one I love
© Chèvrefeuille
I found a nice tanka which I wrote in 2013. This tanka I love to share here too, because I think it fits this episode.
fragile beauty
climbing against the fence
moonflower straightens
with her snow white blossom
to the Summer moon
© Chèvrefeuille
Well ... I hope I have inspired you.
This episode is open for your submissions tonight at 7.00 PM (CET) and will remain open until March 6th at noon (CET). I will publish our first "weekend-episode" later on. (According to this "weekend-episode" I said earlier that I would do two episodes on Fridays, but I decided to not do that. So on Fridays I will only do "Namasté" and "Universal Jane" alternating bi-weekly.)
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