Now in English is a fine selection from the great Persian poet Hafez, so beloved in
Iran that almost every family there keeps his Divan close at hand. When Robert Bly and Coleman Barks visited Iran, they heard schoolchildren singing Hafez poems at his graveside. For some fifteen years, the great Islamic scholar Leonard Lewisohn has worked with Robert Bly to produce this translation, which for the first time carries into English Hafez’s nimbleness, his fierce humour directed at the mullahs, his astonishing range of thought, and the delight of his love poems.

A master of the ghazal form, one of the greatest inventions in the history of poetry, Hafez may be considered as Rumi’s wild younger brother, and is now translated into an English that helps us understand his true genius.

ON THE WAY TO THE GARDEN

The Garden is breathing out the air of
Paradise today. 

I can sense myself, and this lively wine,

And this friend whose nature approaches the divine.
 

It’s all right if the beggar claims to be a King today. 

His tent is a shadow thrown by a cloud;

His banqueting hall is a newly sown field.


Paradise is here in the simple tale that the May meadow tells; the wise person lets the  future and its profits go and accepts the cash now.

Please don’t imagine that your enemy will                

ever be faithful to you. 

The candle the hermit lights will always flutter out in the worldly church.

Make your soul strong then by letting it drink the secret wine. 

This rotten world has its own
Plans:  to press our dust into bricks.

My life is a black book. 

But don’t rebuke a drinker like me too much. 

No human being can ever read
The words written on his own forehead.

When Hafez’s coffin comes by, it’ll be all right to follow behind. 

Although he is a captive of sin,

he is on his way to the Garden.

Among Robert Bly’s other books are The Winged Energy of Delight and The Soul is Here for Its Own Joy.