Hafiz: a ghazal; Andromeda as "A Little Cloud" [Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi]

from al-Sufi's The Book of Fixed Stars
...amazing...

My keen mental preparation for yesterday's posting about Hafiz was spurred by D., who'd told me it was Hafiz's birthday.

Keen mental preparation in my world consists of, more or less, me thinking, Huh; Hafiz; can't wait.

It turns out D.'d seen this in a Parabola Magazine newsletter:

Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi (December 7, 903 – May 25, 986) was a Persian astronomer. . . [who] published his famous Book of Fixed Stars in 964, describing much of his work, both in textual descriptions and pictures.

Hafiz the poet was a Sufi (a Sufi of Sufis of Sufis among Sufis) and Persian. I would think Al-Sufi was a Sufi by his name, but that conclusion could merely highlight my western ignorance. He was Persian, wrote in Arabic and according to http://www.worldlingo.com/ma/enwiki/en/Book_of_Fixed_Stars synthesized the work of earlier astronomers (Ptolemy) in his Book of Fixed Stars, complete with exquisite illustrations, as above. He called the Andromeda Galaxy "A Little Cloud;" sounds like poetry to me.

In another lifetime I studied Ptolemy, and retain vestigial interest. But I'm posting more of the great lover, Hafiz, again translated by Elizabeth T. Gray Jr in The Green Sea of Heaven, an amazing collection of ghazals.

Ghazal 22

Remember the day of union with the friends.
Remember those times, remember.

From bitter sorrow my mouth became like poison.
Remember the revelers’ cry of “Drink!”

The friends are free of the memory of me
although I remember them a thousand times.

I was overtaken in these bonds of calamity.
Remember the efforts of those who serve the truth.

Although there are always a hundred rivers in my eye
remember the Zindehrud, and those who plant gardens.

After this Hafiz’s secret will remain unspoken.
Alas, remember those who keep the secrets.

__
Hafiz
I found the illustration at Galileo: Images of the Universe from Antiquity to the Telescope
http://brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/galileopalazzostrozzi/object/AbdAlRahmanAlSufiBookOfTheConstellationsAndFixedStar.html

Hafiz: authenticity and boldness . . . as good as the world [Emerson]

{see below*}

Did I mess up, or not? D. told me today was Hafiz's birthday. I believe her but see no back-up on the web. Well, every day is Hafiz day.

Ralph Waldo Emerson chanced on a book of Hafiz translations--at a bookstore--ahem--and knew that in spite of awkward renderings from the Persian he was reading someone who, like another of his greats, Swedenborg, "achieved genius through authenticity and boldness." Whose poetry had "the insight of a mystic. . ." A mystic.


"He accosts all topics with an easy audacity." Further, "That hardihood and self-equality of every sound nature, which result from the feeling that the spirit in him is entire and as good as the world, which entitle the poet to speak with authority, and make him an object of interest, and his every phrase and syllable significant."

That's rapture. Emerson knew rapture when reading Hafiz.  The "authority" of Hafiz's poems and being "abundantly fortify and ennoble his tone." {See below.}

I admit, ennoble is not necessarily a Sarah Sarai word. I grew up in the age of the diffident teen. I wore zories--a predecessor of rubber flips flips; we bought them at the drug store. My great ambition was to wear zories into retirement, a climate-dependent ambition. Noble? 

I think of the noble as on the mark, too honest to be dishonest. Honesty is a trap, oddly. Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. Jimmy Carter, Dorothy Day, Charles Rangel, Dag Hammarskjold, Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parks.

That may be why Hafiz is, on many days, my favorite poet. He has and is a direct channel. He teaches us to sing; is expansive; a peacock like an eagle like a hawk like a Belladonna Delphinium, Heliotrope or Cloth of Gold calling songbirds to feed.

Here is one poem by of Hafiz of Shiraz, Hafez-e-Shirazi, Khajeh Shamseddin Mohammad Hafiz Shirazi (or Khwajeh Shams al-Din Muhammad Hafez Shirazi), or Shams and a few relevant links. 

Ghazal 14

The sea of love is a sea that has no shore.
There, you can only give up your soul.

Each time you give your heart to love is a joyous moment.
For auspicious deeds there is no need for divination.

Avail yourself of the rend's way, for this mark,
like the road to buried treasure, is not plain to everyone.

Don't frighten us with reason's prohibitions, and bring wine,
for that watchman has no authority in our province.

One can see him with a pure eye, like the new moon.
Not every eye can hold that crescent's beauty.

Ask your own eyes who is killing us. 0 soul,
it is not the sin of ascendants and the crime of stars.

You are unaffected by the cry of Hafiz.
I am perplexed at that heart, hard as granite.

____
Hafiz, tr. Elizabeth T. Gray, in The Green Sea Of Heaven, Wild Cloud Press, Ashland, Oregon, 1995.

**Emerson's "Persian Poetry" from The Complete Works of RWE -- VIII -- Letters and Social Aims.


http://meherkaren.org/hafez.html
http://www.hafizonlove.com/
http://www.sacred-texts.com/isl/hafiz.htm
http://www.scribd.com/doc/9380172/Hafez-Ghazal-1


*Exquisite calligraphy from: http://www.farsicalligraphy.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Hafiz-poem-33.png

Philadelphia Museum of Art - Prayer - Hafiz

The Place of Weeping [Hafiz]

A whole church has been moved.
What does “art museum” mean—
one corduroy five-year-old stunned
by a splash of antique likeness?
A fountain’s echolocation for his
divine heartbeat? If I’d a brought it,
I’d hand him a Lady Liberty to stop on.
Father and son lured to this temple
inside a reverie like an emerald so
fiery the kid’s shroud palm is scarred
dead center. Lured by what?
Tears silly to be spilled for beauty?
Chisled marble and gray stones
were ferried like conquistadores
over a numbing ocean to humble
the new world. Roll your own,
ladies, and hear the satisfying whish!
of a bright Russian doll halved at
its belly ravenous for chimes, the call.
Mohammed says prayer is better than
sleep. Art is prayer. Redemption is
fleeting, but by the cool temple fountain
awe works this kid standing, mouth open.