He whose heart has been revived by love will never die
Our eternity has been written in the record of the world
Me:
Lips scalded by love’s tongues of flame
Can never taste death’s bitter pain
Hafez:
بگشای تربتم را بعد از وفات و بنگر
کز آتش درونم دود از کفن برآید
When I am dead, open my grave and see
The cloud of smoke that rises round thy feet:
In my dead heart the fire still burns for thee;
Yea, the smoke rises from my winding-sheet!
I said goodbye to you, I don’t remember
What day in September it was
Only that it was dawn
The street was empty
And even the moon, not wanting to intrude,
Pretended that it saw nothing
We smiled at farewell
Like people who know that life
Is just another name that death goes by
We never met again
Nor did we ask anyone
About each other
What memory or yearning
Will tell the whole truth
That we couldn’t handle then?
Whether by nostalgia or by memory
I can only tell the story
Of how much I miss you
Original:
Disse-te adeus não me lembro
Em que dia de Setembro
Só sei que era madrugada;
A rua estava deserta
E até a lua discreta
Fingiu que não deu por nada
Sorrimos à despedida
Como quem sabe que a vida
É nome que a morte tem
Nunca mais nos encontrámos
E nunca mais perguntámos
Um p’lo outro a ninguém
Que memória ou que saudade
Contará toda a verdade
Do que não fomos capazes
Por saudade ou por memória
Eu só sei contar a história
Da falta que tu me fazes
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,
because it doesn’t know how to cry.
Oh how beautiful are the flowers,
the cheerful spring
with its divine colors.
You are the sea,
I am the sand,
I’ll go with you,
wherever you want.
Europe’s Chapel,
Europe’s Chapel,
overlooking the bay
so pretty and beautiful,
so pretty and beautiful,
the fields of Andalusia.
You are the sea,
I am the sand,
I’ll go with you,
wherever you want.
Original:
Lailolailolailo, leilo…
Al Padre Santo de Roma,
le tengo que preguntar
si los pecados que tengo
si los pecados que tengo,
si los pecados que tengo,
me los puede perdonar.
Soy cómo el pájaro triste,
ay que de rama en rama va,
cantando su sufrimiento,
cantando su sufrimiento,
porque no sabe llorar.
{Olé, Paco}
Ay qué bonitas están las flores,
de la alegre primavera
con sus divinos colores.
Tú eres la mar,
yo soy la arena,
yo voy contigo,
dónde tú quieras.
De la Capilla de Europa,
de la Capilla de Europa,
se divisa la bahía
más bonita y más hermosa,
ay más bonita y más hermosa,
de la vega Andalucía.
Tú eres la mar,
yo soy la arena,
yo voy contigo,
dónde tú quieras.
You forged these chains and set me free
I’m your dream, you’re my memory
Don’t forget me, I beg you please
My darkness, light, health and disease
My love is yours, so yours is mine
So lift my ore out of this mine
Don’t leave me shrouded in my mind
Love flows behind the clouds of time
Only my death will end our war
My perfections stain your faults
My waves will crash upon your shore
Until your rocks become my salt
دلم دردى كه دارد با كه گويد
To whom can my heart speak of its pain
To whom can I repent, for I’ve sinned again?
Alas! Isn’t there a sympathetic freind
who would welcome my bad luck?
When you spoke to me of abandonment
you were a dying person describing death
Why should one wash their hands of you when
they’re not full at the table of your union?
My heart sees your face through a hundred walls;
it breathes your scent from a hundred leagues
I won’t forget the rose of your union
otherwise the thorns will grow upon my grave
Today the grief of ‘Attar’s heart
speaks or is silent by your decree
-‘Attar
Original:
دلم دردی که دارد با که گوید گنه خود کرد تاوان از که جوید
دریغا نیست همدردی موافق که بر بخت بدم خوش خوش بموید
مرا گفتی که ترک ما بگفتی به ترک زندگانی کس بگوید
کسی کز خوان وصلت سیر نبود چرا باید که دست از تو بشوید
ز صد بارو دلم روی تو بیند ز صد فرسنگ بوی تو ببوید
گل وصلت فراموشم نگردد وگر خار از سر گورم بروید
غم درد دل عطار امروز چه فرمایی بگوید یا نگوید
Translations from Dick Davis. Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz. Mage, 2012.
Original:
شراب بى غش و ساقى خوش دو دام رهند كه زيركان جهان از كمندشان نرهند
من ار چه عاشقم و رند و مست و نامه سياه هزار شكر كه ياران شهر بى گنهند
جفا نه پيشه ء درويشى است و راهروى بيار باده كه اين سالكان نه مرد رهند
مبين حقير گدايان عشق را كاين قوم شهان بى كمر و خسروان بى كلهند
به هوش باش كه هنگام باد استغناء هزار خرمن طاعت به نيم جو ننهند
مكن كه كوكبه ء دلبرى شكسته شود چو بندگان بگريزند و چاكران بجهند
غلام همت دردى كشان يك رنگم نه آن گروه كه ازرق لباس و دل سيهند
قدم منه به خرابات جز به شرط ادب كه سالكان درش محرمان پادشهند
جناب عشق بلندست همتى حافظ
كه عاشقان ره بى همتان به خود ندهند
And my own Hafez-style poem…
If you see cup and wine as two, you haven’t drunk enough
In this tavern, we drink love’s molten glass, served by the cup
And when the sparkling wine is swirled and left still to breathe well
That’s just the glass-blower whispering his secret sculpting spells
Not only does this wine redden cups’ sweet cheeks and their lips
Its pouring gives them lovely shapes and their bright translucence
The heavens are but spinning glasses cast from frozen wine
How strange that they all seem to fit within this cup of mine
Inside my glass, last night, I saw your face, mingling with mine
In drunken clarity, I sipped myself in your outline
The fine lines of your lips are just the rippling of this wine
And so we drink and kiss ‘till I can’t tell what’s yours from mine
Last night, I got so drunk I sold my soul for cups of wine
I’m back to see what I can get for my body this time
My heart’s the secret flask of that most thirsty of madmen
Who drained the wine, drank the dry glass, then downed the whole tavern
Bilqis thought our way was water, but soon learned this glass held wine
Sulayman’s tricked many spirits into these bottles of rhymes
Though everyone loves wine’s bouquet, who likes the drunkard’s belch?
Be quiet, hold your drink, and keep its secrets to yourself.
“All that is in the Revealed books is in the Qur’an, and all that is in the Qur’an is in the Fatihāh, and all that is in the Fatihāh is in ‘Bismi ‘Llāhi ‘r-Rahmāni ‘r-Rahīm.’“
“All that is in ‘Bismi ‘Llāhi ‘r-Rahmāni ‘r-Rahīm’ is in the letter Bā, which itself is contained in the point that is beneath it.”
-Prophetic traditions
qtd. in Lings, M. A Sufi Saint of the Twentieth Century. Islamic Texts Society, 1993 p. 148
Because the people of this world are in the station where forms are gathered and meanings are separated, they witness various letters as unified and letters which are of one species as numerous individual parts. Thus when they look at the the letters:
يحبّهم و يحبّونه
(He loves them and they love him, Qur’an 5:54)
they see a unified species which is divided in its parts. However, those who have divested themselves of this world—for whom the veil has been lifted and the clouds of doubt and blindness have dispersed from the face of their insight—[they] see these letters through inner sight in this way:
ي ح ب ه م
Then, when they ascend from this station to a higher station, they see them as tiny dots.
qtd. in Rustom, M. The Triumph of Mercy. SUNY, 2012. p. 124
“The point and the ink are interchangeable as symbols in that writing is made up of a series of points of ink…”
The Letters are the signs of the ink: there is not one,
Save what the ink hath anointed; their own colour is pure illusion.
The ink’s colour it is that hath come into manifest being.
Yet it cannot be said that the ink hath departed from what it was.
The inwardness of the letters lay in the ink’s mytery,
And their outward show is through its self-determination.
They are its determinations, its activities,
And naught is there but it. Understand thou the parable!
They are not it; say not that they are it!
To say so were wrong, and to say “it is they” were raving madness.
For it was before the letters, when not letter was;
And it remaineth, when no letter at all shall be.
Look well at each letter: thou seest it hath already perished
But for the face of the ink, that is, for the Face of His Essence,
Unto Whom All Glory and Majesty and Exaltation!
Even thus the letters, for all their outward show, are hidden,
Being overwhelmed by the ink, since their show is none other than its.
The letter addeth naught to the ink, and taketh naught from it,
But revealeth its integrality in various modes,
Without changing the ink. Do ink and letter together make two?
Realize then the truth of my words: no being is there
Save that of ink, for him whose understanding is sound;
And wheresoe’er be the letter, there with it is always its ink.
Open thine intellect unto these parables and heed them
– ‘Abd al-Ghani an-Nabulusi qtd. in A Sufi Saint of the Twentieth Century p. 150-1
In one of his best known explications of the nature of things, Ibn al-‘Arabî looks at God’s creativity as an analogue of human speech. Just as we create words and sentences in the substratum of breath, so God creates the universe by articulating words in the Breath of the All-Merciful (nafas al-rahmân), which is the deployment of existence (inbisât al-wujûd); indeed, existence itself is synonymous with mercy (rahma).
From : Chittick, William, “Ibn Arabi”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.),
Love came and emptied me of self,
Every vein and every pore,
Made into a container to be filled by the Beloved.
Of me, only a name is left,
The rest is You my Friend, my Beloved.
My Beloved, this torture and pain
I suffer because I am so addicted to Your Beauty.
People ask me whether I prefer Your
company to being in heaven.
Heedless fools, what would heaven itself mean
without the Friend’s Presence?
-Abu Sa’id Abu’l Khayr (trans. Vraje Abramian)
from Nobody Son of Nobody. Hohm Press, 2001
Selected Lyrics:
No hay nadie en este mundo
que te quiera más que yo
debajo tierra me meto
donde no me vea ni Dios
…
Yo no me he muerto de pena
porque no supe sentir
y a mi corto entendimiento
le agradezco al vivir
yo no me he muerto de pena
porque no supe sentir
