Poems from the Divan of Hafiz · 34 of 77

Ode XXXII (I)

XXXII UPON a branch of the straight cypress-tree Once more the patient nightingale doth rest: "Oh Rose!" he cries, "evil be turned from thee! I sing thee all men's thanks; thou blossomest And hope springs up in every joyless heart— Let not the nightingale lament apart, Nor with thy proud thorns wound his faithful breast."

I will not mourn my woeful banishment, He that has hungered for his lady's face Shall, when she cometh, know a great content. The Zealot seeks a heavenly dwelling-place, Huris to welcome him in Paradise; Here at the tavern gate my heaven lies, I need no welcome but my lady's grace.

Insight

'Here at the tavern gate my heaven lies, I need no welcome but my lady's grace.' One of Hafiz's cleanest provocations against the standard Quranic Paradise. The orthodox heaven (jannat) is full of huris, gardens, rivers of wine and milk; the Sufi seeker, intoxicated already on the Beloved's grace, asks for none of it. Bell calls this carelessness; the Sufi reads it as fana properly understood, the lover who has lost interest in his own future reward because the Beloved's face is the only future. Compare St. John of the Cross in the Cantico Espiritual: the soul that has been wounded by love can no longer subsist on creatures, can only consume God.St. John of the Cross, Cantico Espiritual, stanzas 7-12; on the Sufi critique of huri-Paradise, Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (1975), ch. 4.

Better to drink red wine than tears, say I, While the lute sings; and if one bid thee cease, "God is the merciful!" thou shalt reply. To some, life brings but joy and endless ease; Ah, let them laugh although the jest be vain! For me the source of pleasure lay in pain, And weeping for my lady I found peace.

Hafiz, why art thou ever telling o'er The tale of absence and of sorrow's night? Knowest thou not that parting goes before All meeting, and from darkness comes the light!