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Thursday, January 30, 2014

Hafiz: "The Sun in Drag"



You are the sun in drag.
You are God hiding from yourself.
Remove all the “mine”—that is the veil.
Why ever worry about
Anything?
Listen to what your friend Hafiz
Knows for certain:
The appearance of this world
Is a Magi’s brilliant trick, though its affairs are
Nothing into nothing.
You are a divine elephant with amnesia
Trying to live in an ant
Hole.
Sweetheart, O sweetheart
You are God in
Drag!


"The Sun in Drag" by Hafiz, from The Gift: Poems of Hafiz, the Great Sufi Master. Purported to be translated from the original Persian (Farsi) by Daniel Ladinsky. © Penguin Compass, 1999.

Please note that Ladinsky's "translations" are controversial, considered by many to be less Hafiz than Ladinsky himself. 

Photography credit: "Hidden Sun," by biglaur (originally color).


4 comments :

  1. One of my favorite! Thanks for posting.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Pure concious is undefinable, is ethernal, is the God, is the Universe. Humans are just the hosts for concious to reincarnate

    ReplyDelete
  3. Does anyone know about the persian version of this poem?

    ReplyDelete

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