Rumi & Hafiz Go Haiku

I have had the thought now for a couple of years of doing at least an ebook titled:  

                       Rumi & Hafiz Go Haiku,

With Annotations

…as I have been pretty deep into haiku for over a decade now, and often recommend the book: Haiku Mind, by Patricia Donegan to people. She is remarkably credentialed in her field and is both a big advocator of the classic 5-7-5 approach to haiku, but also so endorses and encourages a very free style of haiku of three short lines. 

Most of my Hafiz work is still unpublished; there are around 4,000 unpublished Hafiz renderings I have written. Then have maybe 300 Rumi poems I had worked on and never published among my two books with Penguin where I have offered some ... 125 Rumi poems.

Was reading over one of my unpublished Hafiz poems last night and woke with some words from that poem in an interesting way, that is: I was living these 8 words in a rather mystical realm: all within my ken seemed a precious candle burning. And I was so connected to everything. We were One Flame, though different forms could exist. All was the light in the exquisite church—existence.

Here are those 8 words: 

nothing more

   the candle wants

      than to burn

And then more from that same poem (in a more normal format) and it being a kind of unique refrain or expounding of a point I have seen Hafiz so often do, now being:

Look at the beautiful burning candles 

on the alter of existence —

the stars, the moons, the mountains,

the forests, and you and I.

—Hafiz 

Then, just now opening up a favorite Rumi book that I have worked from so many times. It being: Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi, by R.A. Nicholson. Here are some lovely lines of Rumi. These words get a bit sophisticated:

Torn from the breast of the sun,

another tender friend I needed.

So every face and eye that came 

near, I searched for my Beloved.

   —Rumi

And those words can seem especially poignant if one knows of Rumi and Shams relationship and how Rumi in a real and profoundly painful way was separated from Shams. And the word Shams—can mean sun. 

Then three... Rumi goes haiku, from glancing about that book this morning:

unveiling the pitcher

  God poured into me,

       to pour Her into you 

—Rumi

Or that could be said:

I set up a shop in this world to give away—

all I found inside my heart.*

—Rumi 

*a shop: his poems; his books; his homage to us—Rumi's very life.

Then this very free renderings also from a different angle:

when the cork popped,

   the ego died, the party 

      got cranked way up

—Rumi

let our feet play 

   this golden temple drum

      the earth

—Rumi. 

Hard to beat him. Though I think Hafiz sometimes does.

Nothing more the candle wants than to burn.*

—Hafiz

*To burn: the precious burning, to love. To be in as much of a standing or inner ovation of existence, of our self & others, as we can. 

Isn't that the root, the impetus—and hope—of our every movement & sound?

And a new line of Hafiz I crafted also today. It seems so lovely and goes:

Dear ones, so beautiful your shadow —the sun.

—Hafiz

A big hug to ya,