Saturday, June 13, 2015

Day 7: One side of an ongoing conversation with Hafiz

Day 7 of my 30 days of poetry!  (And this one took me less than 30 minutes to write...huzzah!)

I am a little obsessed with Hafiz.  I know, that's weird, and nobody really says that, but seriously.  He's super cool, right?  He's this old Persian dude with a sense of humor, really.  

At any rate, this is one of his poems (from I Heard God Laughing: Poems of Hope and Joy, translated by Daniel Ladinsky):

"We should talk about this problem

There is a Beautiful Creature
living in a hole you have dug. 

So at night
I set fruit and grains
and little pots of wine and milk
beside your soft earthen mounds,

And I often sing.

But still, my dear,
you do not come out.

I have fallen in love with Someone
who lives inside you.

We should talk about this problem --

otherwise,
I will never leave you alone."

So I responded.  I mean, how could I not?  Hafiz wanted to have a conversation...so here we go:

One side of an ongoing conversation with Hafiz

Okay Hafiz, I say,
let us talk about this problem:

You act like it is all so easy.
Like I only need to look up,
to laugh.
to breathe,
to know I am beloved,
you chide me
for questioning and doubting the greatness of your Friend,
your Spirit,
Love, and life
you old Persian,
your poetry reads like fact,
goes down like prescription,
aches in my veins like drug, like addiction, you
patch up all the loveless places in my soul.

Hafiz, I say:
How it is that I feel this love and still question my worthy?

Hafiz, I say:
you leave me fruit and grains,
but perhaps chocolate is a better lure,
you should sing
better songs, or sometimes
lie down and peer under furniture
coax my timid Creature out gently
with no great promises of dancing
she needs quiet gentleness
a human love
for great love scares her.

Hafiz,
I have fallen in love with your promise of Love
and hopeful joy--
show me how to live this.
Do not just keep pestering me
to open to love:
I am only the bug that knocks against the screen
trying to reach the light.

I pause for breath and hear
Hafiz.

I can't be sure,
but I think he's laughing. 

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