All The Hemispheres

Leave the familiar for a while.
Let your senses and bodies stretch out

Like a welcomed season
Onto the meadows and shores and hills.

Open up to the Roof.
Make a new water-mark on your excitement And love.

Like a blooming night flower,
Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness
And giving
Upon our intimate assembly.

Change rooms in your mind for a day.

All the hemispheres in existence
Lie beside an equator
In your heart.

Greet Yourself
In your thousand other forms
As you mount the hidden tide and travel Back home.

All the hemispheres in heaven
Are sitting around a fire
Chatting

While stitching themselves together
Into the Great Circle inside of
You.

("The Subj .. is Love" vers by D. Ladinsky)

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AN INFANT IN YOUR ARMS

The tide of my love
Has risen so high let me flood over

You.

Close your eyes for a moment
And maybe all your fears and fantasies

Will end.

If that happened
God would become an infant in your

Arms

And then you
Would have to nurse all

Creation!

("The Gift" - versions of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky)

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And a Big Herd of Sweet Goats

I used to walk in a beautiful garden
Singing,

But the garden fell in love with my
Voice,
And fell in love with my toes too,

Then concluded it would be smart
To just follow me home
And never move!

The same thing happened with the sun,
Then Saturn and a dozen other
Vacationing, inebriated
Planets -

And a whole near-by mountain range
With their trees and streams and fish still tied
Onto their backs -

And a big herd of sweet, lively goats.

My dear, what Hafiz is really trying to say is:
If you ever get
Lonely,

Come visit this Wild house -
My Celestial Verse -

Where all of us will always
So happily live.

D. Ladinsky - 'The Subj...is Love'

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FOR A SINGLE TEAR

I
Know of beauty
That no one has ever
Known.

How could that be possible
When I may seem
So new in infinite time?

It is because God belongs to only you!

Did you hear that?
Did you hear what Hafiz just said?

God belongs to only you!

It is the only reasonable payment
For a single
Tear.

("The Gift" - versions by Daniel Ladinsky)

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FORGIVE THE DREAM

All your images of winter
I see against your sky.

I understand the wounds
That have not healed in you.

They exist
Because God and love
Have yet to become real enough

To allow you to forgive
The dream.

You still listen to an old alley song
That brings your body pain;

Now chain your ears
To His pacing drum and flute.

Fix your eyes upon
The magnificent arch of His brow

That supports
And allows this universe to expand.

Your hands, feet, and heart are wise
And want to know the warmth
Of a Perfect One s circle.

A true saint
In an earth in eternal spring.

Inside the veins of a petal
On a blooming redbud tree

Are hidden worlds
Where Hafiz sometimes
Resides.

I will spread
A Persian carpet there
Woven with light.

We can drink wine
From a gourd I hollowed
And dried on the roof of my house.

I will bring bread I have kneaded
That contains my own
Divine genes

And cheese from a calf I raised.

My love for your Master is such
You can just lean back
And I will feed you
This truth:

Your wounds of love can only heal
When you can forgive
This dream.

( The Gift trans. D.Ladinsky)