Status Updates From The Subject Tonight Is Love...

The subject tonight is… how Hafez poetry makes me want to squeal!

Showed up in our house by surprise so likely a wedding gift lost. Started reading it in a ski lift line for first chair of the day bc it’s the only one that fits in my chest pocket. Much better translation & format than the Rumi garbage I’m slogging through this year. But still not great. Yet?

“Have fun, my dear; my dear, have fun,
In the Beloved’s Divine Game,

O, in the Beloved’s Wonderful Game.”

The gauge of a good poem is the size of the love-bruise it leaves on your neck.

Or the size of the love-bruise it can paint on your brain.

Or the size of the love-bruise it can weave into your soul.

Or indeed - It could be all of the above.

There is no loneliness to the clear-eyed mystic

In this luminous, brimming

Playful world.

In a handful of the sky and earth,

In a handful of God,

We cannot count

All the ecstatic lovers who are dancing there

Behind the mysterious veil.

True art reveals there is no void

Or darkness.