There is a story about a bird. As if it were a distraught, illusory lover. Sorry!
So sorry for the wanting. being a lover with the poet guy should be easy
But it’s not.
For we could be weeping lovers and then our job would be exactly that: to weep.
In the traveler’s place where the breeze blows from the sweetness of your hair,
Nothing is a fragrant as that – not the best from Nordstrom’s.
Bring the wine of love, spill it so that those hypocritical clothes
Change their color completely.
For we alone are drunk with illusory pride and Sooooo
We’re the last sensible ones left.
Yes.
Have we closed the doors of all the things we should or shouldn’t have done?
Get up anyway.
Because in the flower’s own time, should’s, shouldn’t ’s, would’s, could’s,
Are pretty much a check no one can cash.
What could I write that would be beautiful enough to compare to you?
This is not work for kids.
I could, (but I won’t) be bold enough to be suspended (hung that is) by pride.
Where does love come from?
The bird, the traveler, the weeping, change the subject, change colors.
How subtle.
Nothing. Your lips, your beautiful gray hair.
Anybody’s beauty is not the eye, the hair, the cheek, not even a mole on that
Same cheek. So who knows? There may be more than a thousand subtleties here.
More than a thousand you say? How many can one heart hold?
Remember that check that no one could cash? What if it was worth something?
One of those damn pennies they keep giving in change even though no one
Wants them – we take them anyway. I’m not going to buy anything more that
Doesn’t fit in my room.
The sky of joyousness is tough to reach.
Climb anyway.
In the morning in a dream I knew (really knew) all this.
Hey great! So now sleeping is better than waking?
That’s about all one can take. This tyranny of the thousand subtleties.
And the thing I fear is: that they’ll collapse into one dull story about a bird.
Hey Hafez, hey Kevin that is quite enough depression for now.
Do as little harm as a poet can, and maybe, just maybe that’ll be safe enough.
Hafez 1300’s / for mz jane Kevin 2009
