Hafiz

The Gift Poems by Hafiz, the Great Sufi Master.
By Hafiz Translated by Daniel Ladinsky

“The
Earth would die
If the sun stopped kissing her.”
― شمس الدین محمد حافظ / Khwāja Šams ud-Dīn Muhammad Hāfez-e Šīrāzī, The Gift


“For I have learned that every heart will get
What it prays for
Most.”
― شمس الدین محمد حافظ / Shams-al-Din Mohammad Hafez, The Subject Tonight Is Love: 60 Wild and Sweet Poems of Hafiz


“This is the kind of Friend
You are -
Without making me realize
My soul's anguished history,
You slip into my house at night,
And while I am sleeping,
You silently carry off
All my suffering and sordid past
In Your beautiful
Hands.”
― شمس الدین محمد حافظ / Khwāja Šams ud-Dīn Muhammad Hāfez-e Šīrāzī


“The heart is a
The thousand-stringed instrument

That can only be tuned with
Love.”
― شمس الدین محمد حافظ / Khwāja Šams ud-Dīn Muhammad Hāfez-e Šīrāzī, The Gift


“I should not make any promises right now,
But I know if you
Pray
Somewhere in this world -
Something good will happen.”
― Hafiz


“Let's get loose
With
Compassion,

Let's drown in the delicious
Ambience of
Love.”
― شمس الدین محمد حافظ / Khwāja Šams ud-Dīn Muhammad Hāfez-e Šīrāzī, The Gift


“Listen: this world is the lunatic's sphere,
Don't always agree it's real,

Even with my feet upon it
And the postman knowing my door

My address is somewhere else.”
― شمس الدین محمد حافظ / Khwāja Šams ud-Dīn Muhammad Hāfez-e Šīrāzī, The Gift


“Sometimes I say to a poem,

"I don't have the strength
To wring out another drop
Of the sun."

And the poem will often
Respond

By climbing onto a barroom table:

Then lifts its skirt, winks,
Causing the whole sky to
Fall.”
― شمس الدین محمد حافظ / Khwāja Šams ud-Dīn Muhammad Hāfez-e Šīrāzī, The Gift


“All your wounds from craving love
Exist because of heroic deeds.”
― شمس الدین محمد حافظ / Khwāja Šams ud-Dīn Muhammad Hāfez-e Šīrāzī, The Gift


“Not loving is a letting go.
Listen,
The terrain around here
Is
Far too
Dangerous
For
That.”
― شمس الدین محمد حافظ / Shams-al-Din Mohammad Hafez, The Gift


“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
As I neared God.

What has risen
From the tangled web of thought and sinew
Now shines with jubilation
Through the eyes of angels
And screams from the guts of Infinite existence
Itself.

Love is the funeral pyre
Where the heart must lay
Its body.”
― Hafiz, The Gift


“There are
So many positions of
Love:

Each curve on a branch,

The thousand different ways
Your eyes can embrace us,

The infinite shapes your
Mind can draw,

The spring
Orchestra of scents,

The currents of light combusting
Like passionate lips,

The revolution of Existence's skirt
Whose folds contain other worlds.

Your every sigh that falls against
His inconceivable
Omnipresent
Body.”
― شمس الدین محمد حافظ / Khwāja Šams ud-Dīn Muhammad Hāfez-e Šīrāzī, The Gift


“Lean your sweet neck and mouth
Out of that dark nest where you hide,
I will pour effulgence into your mind.”
― شمس الدین محمد حافظ / Khwāja Šams ud-Dīn Muhammad Hāfez-e Šīrāzī, The Gift


“Lovers
Don't tell all of their
Secrets.

They might
Count each other's moles
That reside in the shy
Regions,

Then keep that tally strictly
To themselves.

God and I
Have signed a contract
To be even more intimate than
That!

Though a clause
Mentions

Something about not drawing detailed maps
To all His beautiful

Laughing
Moles.”
― شمس الدین محمد حافظ / Shams-al-Din Mohammad Hafez, The Gift