Items related to Persian Poets
Synopsis
Still little known in the West, Persian poetry offers extraordinary riches. While celebrating the beauty of the world in poems about love, wine and poetry itself, or telling anecdotes of everyday life, Persian poetry set these themes in the wider religious and philosophical context of Islam. Omar, Rumi, Saadi, Sanai, Attar, Hafez and Jami – the great lyric and didactic poets of medieval Persia – are all represented in this selection of translations spanning almost two hundred and fifty years.
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About the Author
Peter Washington is the editor of many of the Everyman's Library Pocket Poets, including Love Poems, and is the author of Madame Blavatsky's Baboon: A History of the Mystics, Mediums, and Misfits Who Brought Spiritualism to America.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
"The True Sufi"
by Rumi (translated by R. A. Nicholson)
What makes the Sufi? Purity of heart;
Not the patched mantle and the lust perverse
Of those vile earth-bound men who steal his name.
He in all dregs discerns the essence pure:
In hardship ease, in tribulation joy.
The phantom sentries, who with batons drawn
Guard Beauty's palace-gate and curtained bower,
Give way before him, unafraid he passes,
And showing the King's arrow, enters in.
"Where Is My Ruined Life?"
By Hafiz (translated by Gertrude Bell)
Where is my ruined life, and where the fame
Of noble deeds?
Look on my long-drawn road, and whence it came,
And where it leads!
Can drunkenness be linked to piety
And good repute?
Where is the preacher's holy monody,
Where is the lute?
From monkish cell and lying garb released,
Oh heart of mine,
Where is the Tavern fane, the Tavern priest,
Where is the wine?
Past days of meeting, let the memory
Of you be sweet!
Where are those glances fled, and where for me
Reproaches meet?
His friend's bright face warms not the enemy
When love is done-
Where is the extinguished lamp that made night day
Where is the sun?
Balm to mine eyes the dust, my head I bow
Upon thy stair.
Where shall I go, where from thy presence? Thou
Art everywhere.
Look not upon the dimple of her chin,
Danger lurks there!
Where wilt thou hide, oh trembling heart, fleeing, in
Such mad haste--where?
To steadfastness and patience, friend, ask not
If Hafiz keep--
Patience and steadfastness I have forgot,
And where is sleep?
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