The body is like mary
Of the some 1000 poems in seven books I have published with Penguin Random House, there are two poems that I have clearly spent the most time working on. One is this Rumi poem: http://sufispirit.com.au/feature/rumi-sufi-poetry-body-like-mary/. The other is the Hafiz poem for January 2nd in A Year With Hafiz titled: “So You Can Plant More Wheat.”
I have known these twenty-one words of Hafiz, at the top of this link, before any of my books were published— and could easily have quoted them to anyone. This wonderful verse was first self-published by me in 1996 in my Hafiz book: The Subject Tonight Is Love; it is also included under the entry for January 9, in my book, A Year With Hafiz.
This very significant rendering of Hafiz is very close to a literal translation by the late Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh, who was a top psychiatrist at Tehran University and was the head of the Nimatullahi Sufi Order. I featured and expounded on these words in an article I was invited to write for the Buddhist magazine, Lion’s Roar. (You can read that article here via my blog post titled: “A Cornerstone of Hafiz, The Great 14th Century Persian Poet.”)
I woke up this morning feeling something of the precious burning. That is, my heart seemed more alive and expansive and wanting to give than I have felt or known it to feel in some time. And I guess that is what drew me to featuring this blog around Rumi today, as I felt this sacred love was a spark of him— Rumi— in me. And I hope it is there to stay for a while.
Both Rumi and Hafiz seem like an infinite ocean in which I can almost always catch a golden fish. With this in mind, I just opened a Rumi book by R.A. Nicholson titled, Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi, and am now crafting, for the first time, some verse. This is a slight rendering (and the title is mine):
From A Song I Sang
Every moment the voice of Love is coming from the left and the right.
Calling us back to heaven, for that is the house we most own, and left
to look around a bit, but now so need to return.
Who can I tell that I knitted every mountain, I knitted every god. I
wished all, all into being from a song I sang.
My soul hand built the throne where existence sits, and is waiting to
crown and adore you, the way my poems can.
The way my poems so yearn to empower -- and free you. Turn you
into your Self again, with infinite knowledge as one of your divine
trimmings!
But you are more, more than Anything. That is just the way it really
is! So why darling, should I not tell you that!
— Rumi rendering by Daniel Ladinsky
Well, I thought this was going to be a slight rendering but sometimes they turn into a beautiful wild horse that leaps over every corral, and can bring you to a nice meadow, if you follow them.
And, there are a couple of my Rumi poems posted on this very fine website http://sufispirit.com.au/feature/rumi-sufi-poetry-body-like-mary/, so cruise there some if you go there and have some time.
A big hug and love, and thanks to any who supports my life work of working with Hafiz, Rumi, and these days… haiku and other pen things toooo!