tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13913082039860885052011-04-21T19:38:55.907-07:00Talat Halmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12466212347125724761noreply@blogger.comBlogger21100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391308203986088505.post-81904115254640752722008-05-01T22:34:00.001-07:002008-05-01T22:36:11.626-07:00A gift from Hafez (Khwaja Shams al-Din Muhammad Hafiz of Shiraz -- 1258-1389/90) <br />master of states and stations of inebriations and intoxifications<br />-- poems of invocations ... in two translations<br /><br />I. Love’s Awakening<br /><br />Ho, Saki, haste, the beaker bring,<br />Fill up, and pass it round the ring;<br />Love seemed at first an easy thing –<br />But ah! the hard awakening.<br /><br />So sweet perfume the morning air<br />Did lately from her trusses bear,<br />Her twisted, musk-diffusing hair ---<br />What heart’s calamity was there!<br /><br />Within life’s caravanserai<br />What brief security have I,<br />When momentarily the bell doth cry,<br />“Bind on your loads, the hour is nigh!”<br /><br />Let wine upon the prayer-mat flow,<br />And if the tavener bids so;<br />Whose wont is this road to go<br />Its ways and manners well doth know.<br /><br />Mark now the mad career of me,<br />From willfulness to infamy;<br />Yet how conceal that mystery<br />Whereof men make festivity?<br /><br />A mountain sea, moon clouded o’er<br />And nigh the whirlpool’s awful roar –<br />How can they know our labour sore<br />Who pass light-burthened on the shore?<br /><br />Hafiz, if thou would win her grace,<br />Be never absent from thy place;<br />When thou dost see the well-loved face,<br />Be lost at last to time and space. <br /> ~~ trans: A.J. Arberry, in Hafiz: Fifty Poems (ed., Arberry) Cambridge, 1962<br /><br /><br /><br />Ghazal 1<br /> <br />O Saki, bring around the cup of wine and then offer it to me,<br />for love seemed easy at first, but then grew difficult.<br /> <br />Flooded with their heart's blood are those who wait for the scent<br />that the dawn wind may spill from her dark msky curls.<br /> <br />Stain your prayer mat with wine if the Magus tells you to,<br />for such a traveler knows the road and the customs of its stations.<br /> <br />What security is there for us here in her caravanserai<br />when every moment the camel bells cry, "Pack up the loads!"?<br /> <br />The dark night, the fear of waves, the terrifying whirlpool,<br />how can they know of our state, those who go lightly along the shore?<br /> <br />In the end, my life has drawn me from self-concern to ill-repute.<br />How long can the secret of our assemblies stay hidden.<br /> <br />Hafiz, if you desire her presence, pay attention.<br />When you find rthe one you seek, abandon the world and let it go. Ghazal 1, p. 37)<br /> <br /> <br />NOTES (p. 144, note 1): saqi. The cupbearer, usually a young man, beautiful and adored [usually "young Turkic slaves" -- p. 10], who brings the wine of love to those in the tavern...; also the elusive friend a Magian (i.e., Zoroastrian) boy,...a beautiful and distracting idol (but, pl. butan) idol, carries with it most of its English connotations...but usually refers to the beloved or a person of great, and thus distracting, sensual beauty [p. 150, note 1 to Ghazal 12]. Pir-i Mughan, the Elder or Master of the Magi, who were Zoroastrian fire-worshippers [actually meaning that when they prayed to Ahura Mazda, they faced a fire (in temples) or at least a source of light elsewhere] and thus, in Islamic terms unbelievers. Unconstrained by the Islamic prohibitions against alcohol, Zoroastrians, or Mazdeans [better name as derived from the single God Ahura Mazda] (and Christians) operated taverns, and thus the Magus is the tavern-master, the source of wine (with all its heretical and spiritually symbolic associations).<br /> <br /><br /><br />from Ghazal 5<br /> <br />Saki, make our cup ablaze with winelight.<br />Sing minstrel, the world has become as we wished.<br /> <br />O you who don't understand our perpetual joy in drinking,<br />in our cup we have seen the image of his face.<br />.... <br /> <br />translated by Elizabeth T. Gray, Jr. from The Green Sea of Heaven: Fifty Ghazals from the Diwan of Hafiz. Ashland, Oregon: White Cloud Press, 1995, p. 37<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1391308203986088505-8190411525464075272?l=pathofishq.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Talat Halmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12466212347125724761noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391308203986088505.post-37294424502478452712008-03-29T09:57:00.000-07:002008-03-29T19:52:44.848-07:00Let's place the rose of God's Beauty between us and contemplate His Love. <br /><br /><br />Abu Husayn an-Nuri said that "passionate love ('ishq) is not greater than surene love (mahabba) except that the passionate lover ('ashiq) is kept away while the serene lover (muhibb) enjoys his love."<br /><br />quoted from Ahmed Karamustafa, Sufism: The Formative Period 2007<br />also in Carl Ernst, Words of Ecstacy, p. 98<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1391308203986088505-3729442450247845271?l=pathofishq.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Talat Halmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12466212347125724761noreply@blogger.com0