Part of our weekly Sufi Wisdom series. This entry comes from The Gift, Poems by Hafiz, the Great Sufi Master, translated by Daniel Ladinsky. It was used brilliantly in an art photo called "It Felt Love" which uses an optical illusion to tie the whole composition together.
Did the rose
Ever open its heart
And give to this world
All its
Beauty?
It felt the encouragement of light
Against its
Being
Otherwise,
We all remain
Too
Frightened
To which I add a saying of Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav:
This holiday season, fear not - and spread the light. Merry Christmas!
Beautiful poem, but the unnecessary apostrophes are jarring to a curmudgeon like me.
"Its" as a possessive or genitive takes no apostrophe.
"It's" as a contraction of "it is," does.
A necessary piece of pedantry.
Oops. That's what you get for cutting and pasting. This is a pet peeve of mine too. Will fix.
Are you aware that Ladinsky is not translating Hafez at all? Not one word, not one line is from Hafez. There is a considerable protest against his use of Hafez's name from, among others, the poet Nemet Nejat.
Yes, I agree to Anne. Ladinsky is selling his own poems. In the preface of his "translation" of "The Gift" he states himself that after half a year (!) of trying to translate Hafez first from the Farsi then from the English translation by H. Wilberforce-Clarke Hafez appeared in a dream to him and "sang hundreds of lines of his poetry to me in English, asking me to give that message to his "artists and seekers"."
Well, last week Hafez appeared in a dream to me - with roses in one hand and a goblet of wine in the other and said: "Tell all truthloving people - those verses are Ladinsky's and not mine!"