Hafiz – It Is Time to Wake Up!

It Is Time to Wake Up!

by Hafiz

English version by Thomas Rain Crowe

Hey you, parrot! speaking in riddles,

Sugar wouldn’t melt in your mouth!

Clear your head so your heart will be happy,

And then mimic the words of the Beloved!

To everyone who walks by, you have given mixed

messages;
For God’s sake, tell us something we don’t know.

O Winebringer, throw some of Your best wine in

our face,
For it is time to wake up!

What chord was it last night that the Minstrel

played
That caused the drunk and the pious both to
dance?
What drug did You put in their cups
That caused them to lose both their hats and their
heads?

Not even to Alexander the Great would Your lovers

give the Wine of Life;
He hadn’t the power or the gold for that price.

Today, treason is the currency of the world,

But compared with Love, even alchemy has lost its
flash.

Come, and listen to our stories of pain;

Even with few words, the truth is still there.

O Lord, don’t tell our secrets to those who don’t

drink;
One cannot give a picture on the wall Your
enlightened touch.

To a millionaire, money is the standard of the

world;
Hafiz says: O beggars, I have exchanged all my
money for these poems!
 — from Drunk on the Wine of Beloved: 100
Poems of Hafiz, by Thomas Rain Crowe

/ Photo by Hamed Saber /

Something today by the great Persian — that is, Iranian — poet, Hafiz, in honor of the
resurgence of the Green Revolution once again taking place in Iran, having gained renewed
momentum following the protests in Egypt.

O Winebringer, throw some of Your best wine in our face,

For it is time to wake up!

There are many ways to wake up, individually and collectively.

This is a poem that might be tempting to rush through, reading it, saying this or that image
is pretty, and then moving on with the day. But stop. Take a few moments to really read it.
Spend a little time with the lines. There is so much to be found in each couplet…

Remember what I’ve said about wine representing the bliss of spiritual union in Sufi poetry.
Clear your head so your heart will be happy,
And then mimic the words of the Beloved!

I’ve been rereading some things I’ve written in the past about the power of poetry. I
thought they might be worth sharing again…

Sacred experience, truth, is too all-encompasing, too immense for descriptive prose. The
language of prose attempts to box in meaning, whereas poetry allows meaning to gather.
The elastic nature of poetry is better suited to the sacred experience, relaying the truth of
the experience without attempting to circumscribe it. This is why mystics in every culture
write poetry.

Poetry has an immediate effect on the mind. The simple act of reading poetry alters thought
patterns and the shuttle of the breath. Poetry induces trance. Its words are chant. Its
rhythms are drum beats. Its images become the icons of the inner eye. Poetry is more than
a description of the sacred experience; it carries the experience itself.

Hafiz

Iran/Persia (1320 – 1389) Timeline

Muslim / Sufi

Hafiz, whose given name was Shams-ud-din Muhammad, is the most beloved poet of
Persia. Born in Shiraz, he lived at about the same time as Chaucer in England and about
one hundred years after Rumi. He spent nearly all his life in Shiraz, where he became a
famous Sufi master. When he died he was thought to have written an estimated 5,000
poems, of which 500 to 700 have survived. His Divan (collected poems) is a classic in the
literature of Sufism. The work of Hafiz became known to the West largely through the
efforts of Goethe, whose enthusiasm rubbed off on Ralph Waldo Emerson, who translated
Hafiz in the nineteenth century. Hafiz’s poems were also admired by such diverse writers as
Nietzsche, Pushkin, Turgenev, Carlyle, and Garcia Lorka; even Sherlock Holmes quotes
Hafiz in one of the stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. In 1923, Hazrat Inayat Khan, the Indian
teacher often credited with bringing Sufism to the West, proclaimed that “the words of Hafiz
have won every heart that listens.”

– From The Gift: Poems of Hafiz the Great Sufi Master