Daniel Ladinsky: The Need

Bow to everything

“For the truth is: if you can’t … you are still veiled, still caged.”

DANIEL LADINSKY (born 1948) is an American writer and poet, internationally renowned for his profound renderings of sacred verse, specifically beautiful transcreations of the poets of Persia.

In this month’s guest post for The Culturium, Daniel outlines his love for Sufi mystic Hafiz and the soul’s yearning that permeates his evocative and enlightening words.

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When are we, or any creature, not in need? It seems constant. There is our need for breath; food and water; sleep; warmth, or not too much of it; to work and to play; to be in the company of others; and … to socially interact on some level with nature—or know the touch of a wondrous animal.

And the need is there to always try and touch the sun the best we can. Touch the sun. We all carry those suns around with us, those emotional and psychological memories of freedom or love, the worlds of spiritual concerns and experiences.

For me, that sun is writing, or sitting all alone in a park, not too far from where the children play on slides and merry-go-rounds, and dogs are running around, and birds are near. And the hundred-year-old trees whispering sweet secrets.

Abolhassan Sadighi, Hafiz - The Culturium — Abolhassan Sadighi, *Hafiz*.
Image: CC BY-SA 4.0

Shams-ud-din Muhammad Hafiz (c. 1320–1389) was one of the most beloved poets of the Persians and is considered by many, whatever their creed or culture, to be one of the seven literary wonders of the world. Indeed, the “Fal-e Hafiz” is an ancient tradition in which a reader asks Hafiz for advice when facing a difficulty or at an important juncture in their life, treating his books as an oracle and opening them with a deep wish for spiritual guidance.

I have published around 700 Hafiz rendering-poems in six volumes of verse. And the impetus behind every single line of Hafiz that I ever wrote is to help light a candle in the reader’s heart, to assist our perennial need to have fun, to laugh and to dance, “to lift the corners of the mouth”. With the weight that can be on us in a single hour or an entire day, Hafiz is there to lighten and illumine, be our inner sun.

So herewith is an offering of some of my favourite lines, beautifully read by my dear friend and assistant, Melissa LaScaleia. May their light permeate your soul and be an opening to love.

I am a hole in a flute that the Christ’s breath
moves through—listen to this music.

Look at the smile on the Earth’s lips this
morning, she laid again with me last night!

The mountain’s face lifted me higher than
itself.

A song’s wink aligned me with joy. And a
tune paradise hums I came to know.

The forest, letting me walk amongst its naked
limbs, had me on my knees again in silence
shouting—yes, yes my holy friend, let your
splendour devour me.

If your knees have not buckled in ecstasy while standing
when a veil parts.

If a cherished tear of gratitude has not sung leaping from
your eye.

If anything your palm does touch cannot help reveal the
Beloved.

My words are full of golden secrets that are not too hard
to crack, and will remedy one hundred fears and ills.

Once a young woman came to Hafiz and said,
‘What is the sign of someone knowing God?’

And Hafiz became very quiet, and stood in silence
for nearly a minute … lovingly looking deep into the
young woman’s eye, then softly spoke,

‘My dear, they have dropped the knife. The person
who knows God has dropped the cruel knife most
so often use upon their tender self—and others.’

A rather serious—maybe too serious—university
student from another country came to Hafiz to
personally ask for his permission to translate some
of Hafiz’s poems into a little book.

And he said to Hafiz, ‘What is the essential
quality in your poems that I need to incorporate in
my translations to make them abiding and authentic?’

And Hafiz smiled, and placed his arms on the man’s
shoulders, then said, ‘Do you really want to know?’

And the young man said, ‘Of course.’

‘Well, well then,’ Hafiz began and continued,

‘My poems lift the corners of the mouth—the soul’s
mouth, the heart’s mouth. And can effect any opening
that can make love.’