Hafiz's poetry is rooted in the beautiful human need for companionship and in the souls innate desire to surrender all experience - except Light. These verses speak on many levels simultaneously, though they are crafted with such a brilliance rarely does one feel left out. - In 'Open Secret,' a poem addressed to Hafiz, Goethe calls him 'mystically pure' and at one point calls himself Hafiz's 'twin.'
In his 1858 'Essay on Persian Poetry,' Ralph Waldo Emerson called Hafiz 'a poet for poets' and in his journals wrote "He fears nothing. He sees too far; he sees throughout; such is the only man i wish to be....."
- Preface to The Gift, by Daniel Ladinsky
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Love is
The funeral pyre
Where i have laid my living body.
All the false notions of myself
That once caused fear, pain,
Have turned to ash
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I
Know of beauty
That no one has ever
Known.
How can that be possible
When I may seem
So new in infinite time?
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When
No one is looking
I swallow deserts and clouds
And chew on mountains knowing
They are sweet
Bones!
When no one is looking and I want
To kiss
God
I just lift my own hand
To
My
Mouth.
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I hold the Lion's Paw
Whenever I dance.
I know the ecstacy of the falcon's wings
When they make love against the sky.
And teh sun and the moon
Sometimes argue over
Who will tuck me in at the night.
If you think I am having more fun
Than anyone on this planet
You are absolutely correct.
I hold the Lion's Paw whenever I dance.
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You carry
All the ingredients
To turn your life into a nightmare-
Don't mix them!
You have all the genius
To build a swing in your backyard.
You carry all the ingredients
To turn your existance into joy,
Mix them, mix
Them!
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You are
A shy divine deer
That i cannot caese tracking.
Though only once of late
Did i get so close
To see
My own face and heart
Reflected.
In your wonderous soft eyes.
Only once of late, Beloved,
When i thought I had you
At last cornered
Did
Hafiz
Come to know
The sublime beauty of your body
Against my own hand.
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Fear is the cheapest room in the house
I would like to see you living
In better conditions.
Your soul and my soul
Once sat together in the beloved's womb
Playing footsie.
Your heart and my heart
Are very, very old
Friends.
- Hafiz |
