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Dropping Keys
The small man
Builds cages
For everyone
He
Knows
While the sage,
Who has to duck his head
When the moon is low,
Keeps dropping keys all night long
For the
Beautiful
Rowdy
Prisoners.
Hafiz
Read more: http://www.gaia.com/...
Many diaries ago, I had one titled Mind Touching Mind which was about Sojourner Truth and her sermon, Ain’t I a Woman? I meant to do more of them. That is what words and literature do; they cross the ages and wonderful communication is possible between an author's fertile, agile, courageous, and witty mind and our own.
Tonight, it is Hafiz, Rilke, and Rumi whom I celebrate.
Hafiz quotations here:
http://www.gaia.com/...
Your love
Should never be offered to the mouth of a
Stranger,
Only to someone
Who has the valor and daring
To cut pieces of their soul off with a knife
Then weave them into a blanket
To protect you.
Hafiz
"I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being."
Hafiz of Persia
Wiki says:
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Khwāja Šamsu d-Dīn Muḥammad Hāfez-e Šīrāzī (Persian: خواجه شمسالدین محمد حافظ شیرازی), known by his pen name Hāfez (born 1315 - died 1390) was the most celebrated Persian lyric poet and is often described as a poet's poet. His Divan is to be found at the home of most Iranians who recite his poems by heart and use as proverb and saying to this day. His life and poems have been the subject of much analysis, commentary, and interpretation and had influenced the course of post-fourteenth century Persian lyrics more than anyone else has.
The major themes of his ghazals are love, the celebration of wine and intoxication, and exposing the hypocrisy of those who have set themselves up as guardians, judges, and examples of moral rectitude.
His presence in the lives of Iranians can be felt through Hafez-reading (fāl-e hāfez, Persian: فال حافظ), frequent use of his poems in Persian traditional music, visual art and Persian calligraphy. His tomb is a masterpiece of Iranian architecture and visited often...
The meaning behind the poetry of Hāfez must, as with all art, be decided by the patron and observer of the work. Though credited as being "The Interpreter of Mysteries," there remain many mysteries regarding Hāfez that have yet to be solved. As the poet himself had said:
Am I a sinner or a saint,
Which one shall it be?
Hafez holds the secret of his own mystery...
One of Hāfez' greatest fondnesses was for wine, so when the Muzaffarids captured Shiraz in 1353 and declared prohibition it is no surprise that Hafez wrote a mournful elegy for the loss:
اگرچه باده فرحبخش و باد گلبيزست
به بانگ چنگ مخور مى، كه محتسب تيز است
Though wine gives delight, and the wind distills the perfume of the rose,
Drink not the wine to the strains of the harp, for the constable is alert.
Hide the goblet in the sleeve of the patchwork cloak,
For the time, like the eye of the decanter, pours forth blood.
Wash the wine stain from your dervish cloak with tears,
For it is the season of piety, and the time for abstinence.
در آستین مرقع پیاله پنهان کن
که همچو چشم صراحی، زمانه خونریز است
به آب دیده بشوییم خرقهها از می
که موسم ورع و روزگار پرهیز است
Four years afterward, finding prohibition unfeasible for the wine-loving people of Shiraz, the ruler Shah Shuja repealed that act and for that reason Hafez immortalized his name in verse.
Of course, Hāfez' fondness for wine was overshadowed by that of love:
I said I long for thee
You said your sorrows will end.
Be my moon, rise up for me
Only if it will ascend.
گفتم غم تو دارم، گفتا غمت سرآید
گفتم که ماه من شو، گفتا اگر برآید
I said, from lovers learn
How with compassion burn
Beauties, you said in return
Such common tricks transcend.
گفتم ز مهرورزان رسم وفا بیاموز
گفتا ز خوبرویان این کار کمتر آید
Your visions, I will oppose
My mind's paths, I will close
You said, this night-farer knows
Another way will descend.
گفتم که برخیالت راه نظر ببندم
گفتا که شبروست او، از راه دیگر آید
Twenty years after his death, an elaborate tomb (the Hafezieh) was erected to honor Hafez in the Musalla Gardens in Shiraz. The current Mausolem was designed by André Godard, French archeologist and architect, in the late 1930s. Inside, Hafez's alabaster tombstone bore one of his poems inscribed upon it:
مژدهى وصل تو كو كز سر جان برخيزم
طاير قدسم و از دام جهان برخيزم
Where are the tidings of union? that I may arise-
Forth from the dust I will rise up to welcome thee!
My soul, like a homing bird, yearning for paradise,
Shall arise and soar, from the snares of the world set free.
به ولاى تو كه گر بندهى خويشم خوانى
از سر خواجگى كون و مكان برخيزم
When the voice of thy love shall call me to be thy slave,
I shall rise to a greater far than the mastery
Of life and the living, time and the mortal span.
يارب از ابر هدايت برسان بارانى
پيشتر زانكه چو گردى ز ميان برخيزم
Pour down, O Lord! from the clouds of thy guiding grace,
The rain of a mercy that quickeneth on my grave,
Before, like dust that the wind bears from place to place,
I arise and flee beyond the knowledge of man.
بر سر تربت من با مى و مطرب بنشين
تا ببويت ز لحد رقصكنان برخيزم
When to my grave thou turnest thy blessed feet,
Wine and the lute thou shalt bring in thine hand to me;
Thy voice shall ring through the fold of my winding-sheet,
And I will arise and dance to thy minstrelsy.
گرچه پيرم، تو شبى تنگ درآغوشم كش
تا سحرگه ز كنار تو جوان برخيزم
Though I be old, clasp me one night to thy breast,
And I, when the dawn shall come to awaken me,
With the flush of youth on my cheek from thy bosom will rise
.
خيز و بالا بنما اى بت شيرينحركات
كز سر جان و جهان دستفشان برخيزم
روز مرگم نفسى مهلت ديدار بده
تا چو حافظ ز سر جان و جهان برخيزم
Rise up! let mine eyes delight in thy stately grace!
Thou art the goal to which all men's endeavor has pressed,
And thou the idol of Hafez's worship; thy face
From the world and life shall bid him come forth and arise!
Three poems translated into English here (there are more if you speak Farsi):
http://www.iranonline.com/...
Ghazal from Diwan of Hafiz
Translated By Gertrude Bell
Poem in Farsi
OH Cup-bearer, set my glass afire
With the light of wine! oh minstrel, sing:
The world fulfilleth my heart's desire!
Reflected within the goblet's ring
I see the glow of my Love's red cheek,
And scant of wit, ye who fail to seek
The pleasures that wine alone can bring!
Let not the blandishments be checked
That slender beauties lavish on me,
Until in the grace of the cypress decked,
Love shall come like a ruddy pine-tree
He cannot perish whose heart doth hold
The life love breathes - though my days are told,
In the Book of the World lives my constancy.
But when the Day of Reckoning is here,
I fancy little will be the gain
That accrues to the Sheikh for his lawful cheer,
Or to me for the drought forbidden I drain.
The drunken eyes of my comrades shine,
And I too, stretching my hand to the wine,
On the neck of drunkenness loosen the rein.
Oh wind, if thou passest the garden close
Of my heart's dear master, carry for me
The message I send to him, wind that blows!
"Why hast thou thrust from thy memory
My hapless name?" breathe low in his ear;
"Knowest thou not that the day is near
When nor thou nor any shall think on me?"
If with tears, oh Hafiz, thine eyes are wet,
Scatter them round thee like grain, and snare
The Bird of joy when it comes to thy net.
As the tulip shrinks from the cold night air,
So shrank my heart and quailed in the shade;
Oh Song-bird Fortune, the toils are laid,
When shall thy bright wings lie pinioned there?
The heavens' green sea and the bark therein,
The slender bark of the crescent moon,
Are lost in thy bounty's radiant noon,
Vizir and pilgrim, Kawameddin!
Another author whose mind I love to touch is Rilke:
Wiki says:
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Rainer Maria Rilke (also Rainer Maria von Rilke) (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926) is considered one of the German language's greatest 20th-century poets. His haunting images focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude, and profound anxiety: themes that tend to position him as a transitional figure between the traditional and the modernist poets.
He wrote in both verse and a highly lyrical prose. His two most famous verse sequences are the Sonnets to Orpheus and the Duino Elegies; his two most famous prose works are the Letters to a Young Poet and the semi-autobiographical The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. He also wrote more than 400 poems in French, dedicated to his homeland of choice, the canton of Valais in Switzerland...
From 1923 on, Rilke increasingly had to struggle with health problems that necessitated many long stays at a sanatorium in Territet, near Montreux, on Lake Geneva. His long stay in Paris between January and August 1925 was an attempt to escape his illness through a change in location and living conditions. Despite this, numerous important individual poems appeared in the years 1923-1926 (including Gong and Mausoleum), as well as a comprehensive lyrical work in French.
Only shortly before his death was Rilke's illness diagnosed as leukemia. The poet died on 29 December 1926 in the Valmont Sanatorium in Switzerland, and was buried on 2 January 1927 in the Raron cemetery to the west of Visp.
Rilke had believed that his death would be from blood poisoning as the result of having been pricked by a rose thorn. He chose his own epitaph as:
Rose, oh reiner Widerspruch, Lust,
Niemandes Schlaf zu sein unter soviel
Lidern.
Rose, oh pure contradiction, desire
of being No-one's sleep, under so
many lids.
Here is the translation I like best of The Panther:
'The Panther'
His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars, and behind the bars, no world.
As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.
Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tense, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.
-- Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by Steven Mitchell
http://www.cs.rice.edu/...
a second translation:
The Panther
His tired gaze - from passing endless bars -
has turned into a vacant stare which nothing holds.
To him there seem to be a thousand bars,
and out beyond these bars exists no world.
His supple gait, the smoothness of strong strides
that gently turn in ever smaller circles
perform a dance of strength, centered deep within
a will, stunned, but untamed, indomitable.
But sometimes the curtains of his eyelids part,
the pupils of his eyes dilate as images
of past encounters enter while through his limbs
a tension strains in silence
only to cease to be, to die within his heart.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming
http://www.geocities.com/...
A site with several translations of The Panther:
http://www.thebeckoning.com/...
Exposed on the cliffs of the heart
Rilke
Exposed on the cliffs of the heart. Look, how tiny down
there,
look: the last village of words and, higher,
(but how tiny) still one last
farmhouse of feeling. Can you see it?
Exposed on the cliffs of the heart. Stoneground
under your hands. Even here, though,
something can bloom; on a silent cliff-edge
an unknowing plant blooms, singing, into the air.
But the one who knows? Ah, he began to know
and is quiet now, exposed on the cliffs of the heart.
While, with their full awareness,
many sure-footed mountain animals pass
or linger. And the great sheltered birds flies, slowly
circling, around the peak's pure denial.-But
without a shelter, here on the cliffs of the heart...
Translated by Stephen Mitchell
My thoughts
cfk
as Rilke sang to me
sometimes I am the panther
sometimes the storm
sometimes the song
sometimes I am exposed on the cliffs of the heart
and if I in a past life
was a worker of the earth
I am sure I had songs on my lips
as I dug and planted
and I had time enough
to hold my child even if briefly
before she departed
and all was not drudgery
there was clapping and dancing
and hope
for my spirit ever
tries to escape the thousand bars
of Rilke's panther
and I honor it for that
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Rumi is another who is still remembered:
Wiki says:
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Mawlānā Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī (Persian: مولانا جلال الدین محمد بلخى), also known as Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī (Persian: جلالالدین محمد رومی), but known to the English-speaking world simply as Rumi...
Rumi's importance transcends national and ethnic borders.[30][not in citation given] Readers of the Persian language in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan see him as one of their most significant classical poets and an influence on many poets through history.
Rumi's poetry forms the basis of much classical Iranian and Afghan music. Contemporary classical interpretations of his poetry are made by Muhammad Reza Shajarian, Shahram Nazeri, Davood Azad (the three from Iran) and Ustad Mohammad Hashem Cheshti (Afghanistan). To many modern Westerners, his teachings are one of the best introductions to the philosophy and practice of Sufism. Pakistan's National Poet, Muhammad Iqbal, was also inspired by Rumi's works and considered him to be his spiritual leader, addressing him as "Pir Rumi" in his poems (the honorific Pir literally means "old man", but in the sufi/mystic context it means founder, master, or guide).
Rumi's work has been translated into many of the world's languages, including Russian, German, Urdu, Turkish, Arabic, French, Italian, and Spanish, and is being presented in a growing number of formats, including concerts, workshops, readings, dance performances, and other artistic creations. The English interpretations of Rumi's poetry by Coleman Barks have sold more than half a million copies worldwide, and Rumi is one of the most widely read poets in the United States.
From Essential Rumi
by Coleman Barks
The minute I heard my first love story,
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere,
they're in each other all along.
http://peacefulrivers.homestead.com/...
Some Kiss We Want
Rumi
There is some kiss we want with
Our whole lives, the touch of
Spirit on the body. Seawater
Begs the pearl to break its shell.
And the lily, how passionately
It needs some wild darling! At
Night, I open the window
and ask the moon to come and press its
Face against mine. Breathe into me.
Close the language-door and
Open the love-window. The moon
Won’t use the door, only the window.
http://www.patpreble.com/...
Speaking of minds touching. I posted a poem that was shared with me years ago and that stirs something in my mind. After I shared it, trivium wrote a response that deserves to be seen:
Poem by Harold Munro (shared by la urracca)
"Overheard on a Saltmarsh"
Nymph, nymph, what are your beads?
Green glass, goblin. Why do you stare at them?
Give them me.
No.
Give them me. Give them me.
No.
I will howl all night in the reeds,
lie in the mud and howl for them.
Goblin, why do you love them so?
They are better than stars or water,
better than voices of winds that sing,
better than any man's fair daughter,
your green glass beads on a silver ring.
Hush, I stole them out of the moon.
Give me your beads, I desire them.
No.
I will howl in a deep lagoon
for your green glass beads, I love them so.
Give them me. Give them.
No.
........................................
. . . And thus the saltmarsh he befouled,
That goblin, as he lay and howled
And menacingly glared up -- sputtered --
Vitriol in each word uttered
Cursing indigoed night sky
Asking his unanswered Why
Why had the nymph no eyes to see?
To penetrate the inside He?
To sense the words he dared not use
Before her face, as Life he'd lose
The goblin's rage then evanesced
Indeed, from love he'd have confessed:
"I'm your Father," he'd have said
"The one whom you were told was dead
But suffered I a worser fate
As catspaw of a wizard great
And terrible, who changed me so
That all recoil where-e'er I go."
The nymph was fled into the night
And heard no word of Goblin's plight
She never knew the loathsome beast
Could by her kindness be released
Had she but given those green beads
To satisfy a wizard's needs
Then broken would the spell have been
And Beast revealed as loving kin
In her hut, before Nymph slept
Came thoughts of Father; then, she wept.
by trivium
on Thu Oct 01, 2009 at 11:06:23 PM EDT
So, my theme, tonight, is words and literature that lasts; those words that reach out across the centuries and touch our minds. Who speaks to you?
Diaries of the week:
Self-Turmoil in Rimbaud’s A Season in Hell
by ArkDem14
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Write On! How To Sell a Novel in 72 Hours
by GussieFN
http://www.dailykos.com/...
DK Greenroots: Climate Change Superheroes
by citisven
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Threescore Years And Ten Ago; Conclusion
by Charlotte Lucas
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Book Rec: Fritz Stern's "Gold and Iron"
by halef
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Gone Like the Last Biscuit: Garrison Keillor and the Ghost of Dixie Past.
by StandUpToRacism
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Vanishing Rainforest -- Sumatra, Indonesia -- DKos Travel Board #23
by LaughingPlanet
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Let's read a book together! Guns, Germs and Steel: Chapter 10: Spacious skies and tilted axes
by plf515
http://www.dailykos.com/...
NOTE: plf515 has changed his book talk to Wednesday mornings early.
sarahnity’s list of DKos authors has grown so much that she has her own diary.
http://www.dailykos.com/...
sarahnity says:
It turns out that we have quite a few authors hanging out here who have published books in the real world. A while ago, I started keeping a list of books by Kossacks, former Kossacks and Kossacks-once-removed. I was posting it each week to the diary series What Are You Reading and Bookflurries, but the list has grown long enough, that I've decided to turn it into a diary and post it as a weekly series on Tuesday evenings.
Not all Kossack authors may wish to lose their anonymity, so I am only including the author's UID if he has outed herself here (gender confusion intended). If you'd like to be included on the list, or if you know of an author who is left off, please leave a comment or email me.
(sarahnity@gmail.com)