De middeleeuwse dichter Khajeh Shamsedin Mohammade Shirazie, beter bekend als Hafez, is een Perzisch dichtkunstenaar van alle tijden. Hij wordt ook wel de Shakespeare van de Perzische literatuur genoemd.
Gedichten van Hafez
Hier een kleine greep uit zijn mooiste woorden, prachtig vertaald door Daniel Ladinsky.
If You Don’t Stop That
I used to live in
A cramped house with confusion
And pain.
But then I met the Friend
And started getting drunk
And singing all
Night.
Confusion and Pain
Started acting nasty,
Making threats,
With talk like this,
“If you don’t stop ’that’ –
All that fun –
We’re Leaving.”
Like Passionate Lips
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 sign that falls against
His inconceivable
Omnipresent
Body.
Elegance
It
Is not easy
To stop thinking ill
Of others.
Usually one must enter into a friendship
With a person
Who has accomplished that great feat himself.
Then
Something
Might start to rub off on you
Of that
True
Elegance.
Why Abstain?
Why
Abstain from love
When like the beautiful snow goose
Someday your soul
Will leave this summer
Camp?
Why
Abstain from happiness
When like a skilled lion
Your heart is
Nearing
And
Will someday see
The divine prey is
Always
Near!
A Great Need
Out
Of a great need
We are all holding hands
And climbing.
Not loving is a letting go.
Listen,
The terrain around here
Is
Far too
Dangerous
For
That.
All the Hemispheres
Leave the familiar for a while.
Let your senses and bodies stretch out
Like a welcomed season
Onto the meadow and shores and hills.
Open up to the Roof.
Make a new watermark on your excitement
And love.
Like a blooming night flower,
Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness
And giving
Upon our intimate assembly.
Change rooms in your mind for a day.
All the hemispheres in existence
Lie beside an equator
In your heart.
Greet Yourself
In your thousand other forms
As you mount the hidden tide and travel
Back home.
All the hemispheres in heaven
Are sitting around a fire
Chatting
While stitching themselves together
Into the Great Circle inside of
You.
