From This Hidden Fire . . .

Everyone has a star that is born with him and leaves this world with him. The star of fortune of the poet is the sun that existed at the beginning of time, and will remain forever. It has me in itself, and because of it, I am present at the beginning and at the end, since my star is my place of birth and my resting place. The bird sleeps on the mountain, the fish in the sea, and the poet in light, having bright dreams. He sets his imagination in flight, into the sky like a star in daylight and in the darkness of the night. Because the unruly steed of his imagination, his white colorful steed with sprawling mane and noble face, gallops with long, strong legs in waking and in sleep, it does not sleep and does not stop. And once he releases his star into the sky, in its light, he sees all that is worth seeing, since he now possesses a clear vision and embodies universal insight. How magnificent is the sun and what a friendly light is in my bosom, more brilliant and more clear-sighted than the eye of the sun!

The flaming torch of the sun

that rises in the eastern sky

is lit from the hidden fire inside my breastⁱ

The fire in my breast is restless, in drunkenness and in sobriety and in being and not being. How could my sun rest? When the silence of the nocturnal place of sleep comes softly and stealthily to conceal my light, my runaway sun is at work on the other side of night, to rise again and return. My night is not mere darkness, it is illumined darkness.

If a ray of light does not shine from my breast, my night and day and my moon and sun are the darkness of the night of the winter solstice; with blind eyes, I am present in nonexistence and in my prison, I observe the invisible. When can I find a place to escape from “the house of nature,”¹ this “shackled frame of the body,”² and open my eyes to reality, to the truth?

My midnight sun is the midday sun. I sleep in light, and in sleep I see clearly, because the source of the river of the sun is in the nocturnal darkness in which Adam’s clay is molded in the measuring cup that reveals the entire universe and in which the water of life finds its way, like light.ⁱⁱ

God molded Adam’s body with clay and formed him into the shape he had envisioned. It was lifeless, lying on the ground, and did not have the ability to exist. Then God breathed into his mouth. The breath of God became the soul of man, and his body came to life. When God measured and molded the clay of man, man’s form and figure capable of thinking came forth. But this form is no other than that which God nurtures and had in his mind. Hence, God created the form of his idea and gave form to his idea. Thus, man is a form of God’s idea, or his formable idea.

In this manner, God’s idea came to be, since everything can be perceived once its form can be imagined. Neither can absolute shapelessness be seen nor can it be perceived intuitively and inherently. Hence, in creating Adam, God became perceptible, and thus he created himself. In the words of the poet, he removed the veil from the face of thought, and man perceived God, and then he could drink from the same cup from which the celestial denizens—those concealed, remote, and inaccessible ones—drank, and he accepted the covenant with God.³

In the rapture of this timeless and eternal unity, the powerless hands of the cruel and foolish—or according to the poet, “mad”—man accepted the friend’s burden of trust.⁴ He was cruel and foolish in agreeing to such a covenant. Had he known what he was doing, he would have split open like a mountain from fright; but because he did not know, he was cruel to himself. Like a flash of light in time, leaving before arriving, having the desire for eternity in his heart, and from the abyss of Satan grabbing for the zenith of God at every moment! “What is in the mind of this droplet that dreams the impossible,” that he imagines he is the regent of God on earth?⁵

This is the fire that was cast on Adam’s being one day, and when it was manifested to Moses on Mount Sinai and he asked, “Am I not your Lord?” he said, “You are.” And when he accepted the covenant, his soul burned with the desire to see, but he was unable to see. A fire in the rays of which an insignificant candle laughs is but a plaything. The fire was that which was in the soul of Moses and made him a wanderer of deserts, throwing caution to the wind, on endless paths to see the friend and to spread the message, that which God wanted in the world.

Everyone, based on his own imagining, reveals a way for man to complete this mission and bring the burden of trust to some destination, and everyone who is on some path is at war with another who is not his traveling companion. The war of the seventy-two factions!⁶ In the dust of this struggle, truth remains obscured, and everyone is content with some fantasy and argues his case.

Nonetheless, let us leave behind the self-righteous fabricators of fanciful stories. The poet leaves behind these blind alleys and arguments and returns to the friend, and he sings in harmony and shares his heart with him. Now, in gratitude for this reconciliation, humans, spirits, stars, and spheres are all intoxicated dancers.

The poet does not contemplate creation; rather, in his own mind—which is of the same make and essence as the conceivable and evolving mind of God—he observes its happening. He has the gift of seeing the notion that says that since the time they began adorning the face of speech, “No one has drawn aside the veil / of Thought as Hafez has.”⁷

In the darkness of yesternight, the poet saw that timeless time before creation, when not only was man being created, but also God was becoming God. In the nocturnal visit of this man who says, “we wanted him and he was filled with desire”⁸ for us, the dawn of man and God is a single thing. In this unity, two friends become contemporaries, and man, as well, like God, is present at the time when there was no time and at the time when there will be no time. Man is from before the beginning and eternal, because he is with God, because God desires him, and God’s desire is absolute, such that it cannot be quantified, a rapturous inevitable love that envelopes all of existence! Such a lover inevitably needs a beloved. The existence of the beloved in a love that cannot be nonexistent—and exists because it does—is a necessity beyond all free will. Our need for him, however, is also a need outside our own free will. Because we do not exist without his existence, we need him to exist, and since we seek him in ourselves and outside ourselves, in being and in death, our need is an eager quest for love.

Two beings filled with longing, two singular lovers, this is both a pleasant and a painful existence that the poet contemplates, and because of which he is alive. Even though we would not exist and could not be without him, without us, he would be a formless notion; and because he created us in the form of his idea, he emerged from his formless, boundless, and chaotic void and was able to see himself. He placed a mirror before himself.

But where and who is outside of him? The entire world is the mirror of his face. Man is in the world, and he looks into this mirror to once again find and recognize himself through it and repeat the statement of the “master of eternal beginning”:⁹ Man is the reflection of the face of God’s idea, and when he looks at his idea, he returns to himself. The thought he manifests, however, is not merely of man but of the entire world. Hence, as man attains his self, he gains access to the entire world, and the all-encompassing eyes of his thought can see every boundless shore.

The poet is a man of clear vision, and clear vision occurs in light. The poet’s seeing, however, is not merely with physical eyes that can only view external things outside the being of the seer. He sees the interior of things and the relationship that connects them and gives them life and soul. These cannot be perceived with the external eye. He views existence from the other side of light and darkness that can be seen, like the nocturnally vigilant god, the angel of good tidings,¹⁰ who brings the message of divine blessing. Like Khezr,¹¹ who drinks the water in the heart of the dark region of hidden eternal light, the poet too is a “recluse.” He is clear-sighted in seclusion and darkness; he sees by the internal light and inner eye; he has an alert heart. As for we who are the prisoners of our few senses and cannot go beyond the seeing and hearing of the body, our lamp is extinguished in the storm of darkness, and our ears cannot hear in the tumult of eating and sleeping. But he has chosen to live in the seclusion of darkness, on the other side of our vision that appears to be dark. He is present at a time and place in which we are absent: in the invisible world. And the invisible world is far away; it is strange and mysterious.

That is where he gains access to the water of life, opens his eyes to see the friend, and is released from sorrow, the sorrow of being a captive within the constricting walls of the body and remaining blind at the bottom of the bottomless pit.

it has grown dark within

perhaps from the hidden world

someone will come and light a lamp¹²

My inner self as well is the realm of the invisible that keeps me invisible to myself. Inner blindness has kept me so removed from my origin and my truth that I do not know myself and my world, as though I am not within myself and another is within me. Something else made of anger and greed, of the burning temptation to dominate others and nature, is in command of me. Egotism has so filled me and so inflamed me, as though I am everyone and the entire world, and nothing and no one else exists but me. In this case, everything and everyone lose their attributes, because they can be seen only from my perspective. As a result, they are separated from their own nature, appear other than they are, and lose their “freedom.” Hence, I take away the truth of things, leaving them hollow and empty.

But since it is impossible for one individual to dominate everyone and possess all that can be possessed, it is I who have lost my freedom; I have become a “thing,” such that “any lingering attachments”¹³ enslave me and keep me away from my truth, my reality, to the point that I become empty and “invisible” to my own self, and my self becomes my invisible realm that I no longer see.¹⁴ The liberated poet resides in the secluded place of this invisible realm that is free of the tumult of my pseudolife: in this alley of the friend, which is his “Sinai desert.”¹⁵ And he is the light in that invisible remote place. Blessed by his light, darkness is destroyed, and if an eye is eager to see, it becomes enlightened by the vision of the invisible realm. Up to now, things were only seen in terms of their benefit or loss for me; but now, with the lamp which that recluse has lit, further beyond, I see people and things in the world that—in a different way and with a different meaning outside limited me, in relationships devoid of my egotism and intent—can also exist in harmony and friendship. The poet removes the mask from the unseen face of existence, leading me into its mysterious inner recesses, and in doing so, removes the veil of imagination from before my eyes and opens my eyes. He is a link that connects me to all that is other than myself. It is through his light that I see. He is the midnight sun and the cup that reveals the entire universe.¹⁶

And this nocturnal darkness, in which the poet resides and in the seclusion of which he dreams of creation, is a pregnant night that gives birth at dawn. Who else is the offspring of dawn but sunlight? Such a night is the source of light, and night like a mother nurtures her bright child within her veins. It is a night of good tidings in the bosom of which one is awake waiting for dawn to rise in the sky with its golden chariot and luminous horses. A darkness, a Khezr, and a cup of water.¹⁷

But the demonic darkness of Ahriman is different. No spot of light shines in it such that one could gaze at it with the eyes of the heart. It is a pervasive darkness the end of which you will never reach, no matter how far you go, and you will see nothing, no matter how long you look. “Companionship with oppressors is like sinking into the darkness of the night of the winter solstice,”¹⁸ as though it is not followed by a dawn, as though it will never end; no matter how long you sit and wait, you will spend your life in darkness, unless you sever your covetousness for companionship and friendship with them and abandon them. “The ill-tempered ascetic”¹⁹ also belongs to the same group of “upstarts” and “the arrogant,” and with every morning that dawns, he descends like black night with the religious rulings he has in his hand and a scroll of what is permitted or prohibited, a morals police chief who “became a high priest and forgot his own debauchery.”²⁰

They are darkness, and they are imprisoned in the “darkness of bewilderment.”²¹ They are not even Alexander, who in search of the water of life²² wandered in the region of darkness, because they search for nothing but themselves. Hence, they are darkness itself, and bewildered, they will remain in their own dark soul and heart.

The nocturnal darkness of Hafez, despite the terrifying waves and whirlpools,²³ is not of this sort. He is a Joseph lost in the well for whom the moon and the sun are searching, and once he comes out of his own inner recesses, he bestows light on the thirsty land of Egypt and the country of the eager eyes of lovers—the eyes of Zoleykha, Potiphar’s wife, and the eyes of the soul of Jacob. In his boundless mind, the moon and the sun are awake.

Last night in my sleep I dreamed that a moon had risen

the brightness of whose face

put an end to the darkness of separation²⁴

Happy is “the auspicious night” that is followed by such a “blissful dawn,”²⁵ and the poet, longing for such a dawn, keeps vigil and is anxious at night. He is moving in a desert of massive darkness, like a ray of light in the warp and weft of the night, and because of wakefulness, he does not allow the silence and stagnation of the darkness of the world to sleep in his concealed hands. A moonlit stream softly moves toward the dawn in this long dream. At dawn, the “mysterious messenger of the tavern” places in his hand the cup of the sun that can reveal the universe, and reveals to him the secret of both worlds.²⁶

Seeing clearly is awareness, seeing clearly with the eye of the heart and revelation that lights the spirit like a lamp; and the light of the lamp shines on all that exists. The world and I both, like a singular body, like the body of the sun, light up; we are both the eye and the vision, and as we see, so we are seen. We are hidden manifestations who are manifest in our concealment and, with the exception of ourselves, we who are an unrevealed secret, we face no secret. Then even after death, I boast of seeing in nonexistence. Is it not true that I know the secret of both worlds?

And it is at dawn that the tavern elder places the cup that reveals the universe in my hands, and when I look into the mirror, I see your beauty, and my heart becomes aware. Happy is the awareness of the poet who awakens at dawn longing for the “face of the sun,” and the sun bestows upon his spirit the light of its face.²⁷ When the aspirations of a poet of this kind mingle with the breath of those who rise at dawn, the poet is freed “from the shackles of life’s sorrows”: “Last night, at dawn, in my distress, salvation was given to me.”²⁸

The messenger angel of God is the messenger and the revealer of the secrets of the invisible realm, and God himself is the guardian of night, who in the mysterious darkness of the night safeguards the world against harm from demons, to entrust it to the caravan of light. The rooster is the good harbinger of dawn and belongs to it. Our “Tongue of the Invisible”²⁹ is the “monarch of the kingdom of dawn”³⁰ who hears the “good tidings” of the invisible voice of dawn with the ears of his spirit.

At dawn, my good fortune came to my bedside

And told me, arise, the beloved king has come.³¹

But this dawn is not before the sun appears, when darkness has lost its hue and has removed its veil from the body of nature; rather, it is a dawn in nocturnal darkness, in the heart and depth of night, and at precisely the time when the end of night arrives, later and farther away than at any other time. When the darkness of the world has surrounded the poet and imprisoned him, the light of dawn shines on his spirit, and the sorrow that had been lodged in him becomes insignificant and is destroyed. The one “who has chosen seclusion and rises at dawn”³² lights up in ultimate darkness, like the North Star that has a bright heart on dark nights and, if a patch of cloud does not block our view, shows the pilgrims the way to the realm of light. Similar to the light of the water of life, which is in a dark cave, the dawn of the poet is an internal light in external darkness. Otherwise, the poet would not say, “at dawn, in that darkness of night.”³³ After all, dawn is not morning. Hafez’s dawn is not always at the end of night; it is often in the heart of it. A night that has such a dawn is the “night of revelation,” with the brightest sun and greatest manifestation of sight. The poet resides in the east of this manifestation, precisely where light emerges. When he is distanced from there, he is alienated from being a poet, and he is no longer the cup that reveals the universe; he is the dust of the road. “I am the visionary cup that reveals the world / and the dust of the true path.”³⁴

Now I return and say that the sun’s cup that reveals the universe is the poet’s star of good fortune, and blessed by its light in this nocturnal darkness that engulfs him, he loses himself and becomes intoxicated by the manifestation of the beauty of the face of the friend.

“With the reflection of your face in the mirror of the cup” of my heart, now a ray of your essence and manifestation of your beautiful face is in me.³⁵ Blessed by your magnanimous light, my beautiful spirit is bright, and I see myself in you. But if I did not have a ray of you, I would be dark and unable to see. Hence, it is your favor that gives sight to my eyes, and now that I can see, I recognize myself again. From now on, I will look into the mirror: “from now on, my face and beauty’s mirror.”³⁶ But since you blew into me a manifestation of your beauty, I am also your mirror:

in the beauty of your faceadmire God’s handiwork

in the mirror of my heartbehold the divine.³⁷

Look at the friend to see yourself, and look at yourself to see the friend. Two mirrors that reflect each other: light in light.

The brightness of the friend’s face shone in the cup of your heart and made of it a cup that reveals the universe. Jamshid is the discoverer of wine, the possessor of the sun, and the king of light.³⁸ Old age and death do not exist in his realm, and everyone enjoys eternal spring and youth. And because the source of light is in his paradise, the denizens of his paradise do not know the meaning of darkness. The cup of Jamshid, which is the goblet of the sun and the gem of light, not only bestows light on everything and makes the gift of seeing possible, but is itself the seer of all things; and for anyone who has it, all veils are removed from before his eyes, and he will learn all the secrets of the world. Nothing remains concealed from his path-finding eyes. He holds a cup in his hand, or his hands are a cup with which and in which he sees the entire world: a full-length mirror that reflects everything. When the sun rises, in its light the earth and the sky become illuminated; but the cup of Jamshid is the imagining of that sun that not only brightens the secret heart of the earth and the sky, but contains the image of all the high and low secrets.

Veils are removed from the earth and the heavens

For anyone who serves the cup that reveals the universe.³⁹

This is the organ of sight that, as it sees, can be seen itself. It sees the world, and the world can be seen in it. Hence, if it looks at itself, it sees everything. And when it sees everything, it sees its own truth. It is an image of an internal sight in which the outside and inside are one.

Keykhosrow,⁴⁰ who was the king of the Persians, possessed just such a cup that revealed the universe; and Hafez, who is the poet of lovers, has such a cup in his heart, which is the secret place of God’s treasures. His heart, which is in search of the cup of Jamshid, searches in vain for it here and there, and pleads with strangers.⁴¹ Man’s heart is the full-length mirror and the cup that reveals the entire universe. But was this ray of the beauty of the friend manifested only in the heart of man? He is the creator of the entire universe. Hence, his manifestation can occur at any time and in any place, in everything and in the midst of all things, and more than anything else, in the cup of inebriating wine.

For a person like me, who every day passes through the corridors of making a living and retires, settling behind a desk, spending my life at a job that is futile and weary, and struggling in the entangling snares of daily routines, living means chewing up and spitting out my life. Guided by the expediency that arranges my relationships with others and provides me with my daily bread, I walk with the feet of a minor intellect that crawls like a worm, hoards like an ant, and rips asunder like a wild boar. Every day, the same smiles, the same repeated lies, and the same injustices boil up from the ground and pour down from the sky. What dark and lasting weariness! It is as though my life were passing through an underground tunnel.

Inebriation from wine is the antidote that frees me for a few moments from the twists and turns of entanglement in expediency. “Oh wine, may my whole life and body be sacrificed for you.”⁴² Even if not much else is to be said about wine, at least for a moment, it “makes one unaware of the temptations of reason.”⁴³ How long in the greater or lesser scheme of things should one writhe around himself like a snake and with wounded hands and feet blindly grope in the dark and not get anywhere? He could see that the human spirit suffers injustice and his life is fraught with pain, that divine justice is in the hands of the powerful and the “upstarts,” and that the angel is the captive of the demon. The vultures devour the carcasses of the fallen, and the hyenas fight over their corpses. The hypocrites are rewarded, and the truthful are punished. Without a sip of wine to erase the memory of sorrow from the poet’s heart, the dread of events uproots his foundation.⁴⁴ He desires a potent wine that can bring down a champion, so that “for a while I may forget / the iniquity of these times.”⁴⁵

But all this aside, the wine that can free us for a moment is indicative of another wine that affects the “essence of the soul” and takes us somewhere beyond this chaos that has no purpose.⁴⁶ In the same way that inebriation means separation and freedom from reason, this mystical inebriation is rapture and respite from the tangible needs and freedom from the confines of human fate. The “wine” of this inebriation is a ray of light from him, and the brightness and beauty of seeing the friend is manifested in the cup of wine that is the source of this inebriation. Wherever the brightness of his beauty shines, that place, like the human heart, becomes a mirror “reflecting God.”⁴⁷ The brightness of his face is everywhere; and wherever it is, there is the human heart, just as the human heart is everywhere. For our Hafez, the cup, the mirror, and the heart are three synonymous concepts born at the same time.

The radiance of his face was reflected in the mirror, and the brightness of the face of the cupbearer, in the cup; and the heart “grasped at her tresses.” Love arrived! “The beauty of your face reflected in the mirror” and certain illusory thoughts appeared in my “mirror of illusions,” with vain hopes that I imagined to be true, and I was deceived by my own imagination. From the brightness of the face of the friend, many strange images and colorful forms appeared in the mirror of imagination, and creation was born.⁴⁸ The world is the mirror and the cup of wine, and the heart is the cup that reveals the universe and the cup of Jamshid. “The heart that reveals the unseen and holds the cup of Jamshid” is the universe.⁴⁹ And the wine in this cup is the brightness of the face of the friend, like the sun that in the cup of the sky is the brightness of the face of the universe.

If you must have sunlight at midnight, cast off the veil

From the rosy face of the daughter of the vine.⁵⁰

Neither does this “midnight sun” have any ray of his face, nor is it an allusion to somewhere or something else. It is none other than that which they take from the vine, place in the wine cellar, and, once it is clarified, even drink its dregs.

There is a revolving firmament that, with its stars of fortune, with night and day and seasons and the moon and the sun, and with its images and sleight of hand, creates time in its revolution, and because we have fallen into the rotation of days, inevitably, we are moving along with it; and in the same way that it brought us at one time, it will take us away at another time. Its work is a meaningless game, one without purpose, and if it does have a purpose, the knower of the world does not know it. In any case, since our lives pass in time, our suffering comes along with the passing of days and bears us away, as though if this passing were not constant, the time for my suffering would not arrive. Hence, there is a simultaneity between the days that come from the revolving firmament and my misfortune. The firmament is blind and absentminded and can neither see nor feel my pain. My soul is steeped in sorrow, and my spirit is silent. A hand is smothering my heart in darkness. Where is a meteor to split the heart of this darkness? Wine in a vat that will erase the darkness of suffering and return the brightness to my heart.

If your heart is about to burst

From the injustice of the firmaments, Hafez,

Throw a meteor at the demon of sorrow.⁵¹

When I had reached the point of being at the end of my rope because of the injustice of the world, I opened the door of the dark wine cellar, removed the veil from the purple face of the sun that was hidden in it, and drank the sun; and with its rays my heart brightened and became free.

I have been struck by an arrow of the firmament

Give me wine so that inebriated

I can knot the cord of Gemini’s quiver

Then splash a sip from the cup on this palanquin

And hurl the hubbub of the harp into the azure sky.⁵²

On the night when the demon raids, wine is the midnight sun that frees me from the injustice of the world and the fear of nonexistence that is with me in life and in death.⁵³ Fear of the silent desert of sleepers in which every traveler disappears embitters my life; it slips like a dream into my wakefulness and does not allow me to be free. From early dawn, the night is the fellow traveler of the sun that brings it down from the middle of the sky and stabs it in the back with the dagger of sunset; but the sun—which runs like the wind through the fertile field of night—sees the morning. The cup of the poet’s heart on that journey, at which all roads end, is overflowing with “midnight sun,” and even without the hope of a morning, it gains victory over the fear of dark loneliness,ⁱⁱⁱ because with the help of the mirror that he has, “he boasts of sight in nonexistence.”⁵⁴

O tie a cup to my shroud

so that on the day of resurrection

with wine I may dispel the fear of judgment⁵⁵

The wine that paves the path of life and eases death for me is not merely a sign of and an allusion to “the brightness of the face of the cupbearer in the cup”;⁵⁶ rather, it is wine itself, because it drives the demon from my heart, and “when the demon departs, the angel arrives.”⁵⁷ The good news of “the messenger angel of the invisible realm”⁵⁸ replaces “the demon of suffering.”⁵⁹ Two wines, each from a different world, blend; the essences of the heavens and the earth become united and one in the mind of our Hafez. In this condition, “the lamp of the cup,” as wide as the sky, and the purple color of the wine achieve the brightness of the candle of the sun.⁶⁰ “The sun of wine from the east of the cup” rises, and in its light, “from the garden of the face of the cupbearer, a thousand tulips” bloom.⁶¹ The dallying of the darkness of sorrow withers in the cup of the heart, and the garden of sight blossoms. Moonlight loses color in the rays of the cup, and the sun lights up the morning harvest with the light of the lamp of wine.⁶² Wine is as bright as the insightful heart of the poet.

The poet seeks the sun of truth, the essence of the cup that reveals the universe, or the cup of Jamshid, so that from the brightness of the wine that it contains, like Jamshid and Keykhosrow, he can behold existence and nonexistence. But since this wine was given to him before the dawn of creation, before any Jamshid or Keykhosrow, they are the ones who have drunk Hafez’s wine and found a way into the heart of creation.

like Jamshid drink from that visionary cup

whose rays disclose the secrets of heaven and earth⁶³

In truth, who is this man? How can a person who lived such a short and difficult life during the darkest period of history within the confines of the four walls of a city boast of knowing the secrets and being the king of two worlds?^iv How can a person whose pillow is merely a clay brick hope to step on the peak of the Seven Planets? The difference between the lowly life and the soaring desire of this mendicant is the difference between earth and heaven. But the poet traverses that distance accompanied by Khezr and does not seek the water of life without his guidance, because he knows that it passes through the realm of darkness. “Fear the danger of going astray!”⁶⁴

Khezr is the guiding angel, the divine face of the soul, a reflection of his face in the mirror of the heart, or the other self of the poet, who rises in the “darkness” of dawn from the pinnacle of the soul; he is his Magian elder. During the period of restrictions and prohibitions when the poet lived and when wine, like freedom, was forbidden on religious grounds, some kindred spirits would surreptitiously make wine; but selling wine was the work of a few non-Muslim Zoroastrians who were not worried about their reputations and being disgraced. Taverns were located in remote areas and isolated neighborhoods in order not to offend the public morality of the faithful. Only the infamous haunters of a pothouse and carefree, wise kindred spirits knew the secret path to it. The old magi would secretly make wine in a back room or a cellar. The cellar where the vats were kept was the dark house; the daughter of the vine was veiled, and the water of life was in darkness. My body is the veil of the spring of the heart and the cellar of vats, the veil of the sparkle of wine. Light is at the heart of darkness.

Khezr shows the way to the water of life, and the old Magi, to the essence of a ruby that “holds no engraved image other than truthfulness.”⁶⁵ The tavern is the place of the truthful, and the breath of the truthful is the morning and light of the world: “Strive to be truthful and the sun will be born from your breath.”⁶⁶ What Solomon could have such breath of Christ?⁶⁷ The beggars at the door of the tavern are the owners of this “kingdom of poverty,” and the smallest part of this kingdom stretches from “the moon to the fish.”⁶⁸ Simorgh,⁶⁹ this legendary bird of truth, spreads its wings over the entire world, and its eyes, like the spear of the sun, penetrate all that exists. Hafez the mendicant, who shares the cup of wine with the celestial denizens, boasts of this indigent Christlike kingdom.

Is there any transient albeit aware mortal who would boast of such hopeful dreams and not suddenly return to his own insignificance, and not remember that he is like a candle in the wind? That is why after that high flight of aspiration, he suddenly falls to the ground of his human and beloved limitations and says: You do not understand, and you cannot boast of poverty. What are you doing, and how do you want to bring the high heavens under your feet? Descend from the zenith of the heavens; do not abandon the gathering of Turan Shah, who is an insignificant minister with a bit of wealth; and do not abandon this comfort with the hope of reaching lofty heights.⁷⁰

Placing one’s head at the threshold of a tavern, the walls of which, despite being low, reach up to the heavens, is like being in paradise. Such a wine worshipper with his short arms grabs the sanctuary of the heavens from his earthly abode, as though such a tavern, with its crumbling walls and roof but with the essence of the sun in its cellar of vats, is the workshop of creation, just as the ruin that is the human body, despite old age and decrepitude, is the secret place of the heart and the house of the artistry of God. The tavern and the body both have two secret treasures, each a light in their prison that longs for manifestation and freedom.

Adam’s clay was kneaded in the tavern, and it was formed into the shape that God held in his imagination. In “the tavern of love, they leaven human nature,”⁷¹ this bewildered nature that remains in the grand talisman of the body, this flying bird that has fallen into the cage of the body and whose heart flies toward the friend! The tavern of Hafez is an ocean at the bottom of which is the sole pearl of love, and the diving poet plunges in search of a gem in the waves and storm, and this “sea whose shores are invisible”⁷² is a ruin that contains the light of the friend, which is the house of light. The person who wipes his eyes with the dust of the tavern nurtures his eyes with light and is able to look into the cup that reveals the universe, which is the mirror of secrets. The Sufis and dervishes wait in vain to see the beloved friend in the monastery in order to tread the path of love. The secret of the monastery is revealed through the “blessing of the cup.”⁷³ One must find a way to the “threshold of the tavern.”⁷⁴ And the one who finds the secret of the two worlds reads it in the line of the cup; and he who also finds his way from the image in the dust to the wondrous secrets of the heart’s cup that reveals the universe “turns dust into gold with a glance,”⁷⁵ and because of the attributes of gold, the quality of things changes. Not that the worthless mudbrick and dust would acquire the glimmering of gold; rather, the cloak of darkness falls off the human frame, and man’s “illuminated persona” emerges. Such a spectator, with the elixir of gold that he has in the eye of his heart when he looks at the world, from the brightness of the light, the body of existence, sees beautiful colorful images.

at every moment the image of your face

blocks the road of my imaginings

to whom shall I tell the things

I see in this shadow play⁷⁶

Neither the body nor the tavern remain within their strict boundaries, neither the body within its frame nor the tavern within nature. The body shows the way to the friend through the path of the heart, and the tavern through wine. Two windows of light, one in the dark house of the body and the other in the monastery of the Magi,⁷⁷ show man the way to the spring of the sun. The seeker of the spring, however, must undoubtedly go beyond “the house of nature.”⁷⁸

The nature of the world and of man is not some carrion that has been created without reason, futile and in vain, deserving detestation. The body is neither corruption nor darkness, and the asceticism of the Manichean monks is not pleasing to our poet. He is enamored with gazing at the garden of the world, and he considers every moment of it a rare opportunity for enjoyment. To be “beside a spring, by a stream,”⁷⁹ with a book, a cup, and a companion, is a joy that he would not exchange for this or the next world. Because of some unexplained coincidence, being able to live for a few days and walk on earth is a rare opportunity that you pilfer from the claws of miserly time. Beneath the ground is the house of failed dreams; but to become enamored of nature and to remain helpless watching these enchanting images and not see anything beyond is to fall into the trap of appearances. Nature is a manifestation of truth, but it is not the complete truth. When you gaze at the growth of plants, the flight of birds, the loneliness of stars, and the weeping of the rain with the heart’s eye; when you hear the sounds of the day and the silence of the mountain with the ear of your intellect; and when you wash your wandering soul in the running water, you join the sea along with the stream and overflow with the memory of the friend.

This same world, with its pains and regrets, that abandons its offspring on earth and like a very patient vulture awaits their death and decay, is the workshop of God’s creation: like the human body, like Hafez’s tavern! The world is not merely these ruins in which humans in the name of reason run about like madmen. This workshop, with the light that it contains, takes you outside its four walls. God’s workshop of creation is a house in which, if you are able to see, the house of God is discernable. The tavern is an image of an exalted creation, because a nature that extends beyond “the house of nature” and beyond itself finds its way to the alley of truth.

Somewhere far away, water bubbles forth and saturates the parched body of the earth. A stream is a sign of the existence of the spring and its flowing in a narrow channel. This narrow stream is connected to that bubbling spring in the same way that the low roof of the tavern is connected to the seventh heaven! And the poverty of those who frequent this tavern is the wealth of both worlds.

In this house of ruins, a messenger brings the good tidings of paradise. The tavern of the poet is not the raw substance of silent nature. In the realm of imagination, it may be another form of this house with two doors, the world as a caravanserai: the Magi’s tavern and the light of God, darkness and a window to liberation! And the poet himself is astounded by “what light he sees, and from where.”⁸⁰

The path of the journey of the haunters of the tavern traverses darkness, and the danger of going the wrong way looms like an ambush by bandits. One should not thus embark without the guidance of Khezr. A traveler without a guide who has knowledge of the secrets will remain helpless on the path and will not reach the desired destination. The unknown route of this journey is not the sort of knowledge that can be found in a book. There may be knowledgeable people who have learned a great deal about the movement of the stars, the how and why of things, and the ways and the protocols of affairs, but they are confused and take the wrong path in the world. They are like a blind man with a torch and a cane; they search the bowels of nature and destroy it; and they imagine the means of making a living, the manipulation of politics, and sleight of hand in order to eat and sleep to be truth. Imagine having a lamp in hand but with eyes that are blind in the house of the heart.

Such knowledge ruins my world and destroys my soul. Even if the knowledge of ascetics, religious jurists, theologians, and Koranic interpreters could not ruin the world of that memorizer of the Koran,⁸¹ it would at least make the life of kindred spirits like him bitter. Philosophers, alchemists, astrologers, and soothsayers did not provide answers to the poet’s unanswerable questions, and the pretentious physicians did not remedy his pain. Among the mystics and Sufis, he was not fond of any of the elders. His recollection of them brought a sneer, and their names would be uttered by him with the sarcasm that hypocrites deserve. After all, even though they too repudiated the learned, with their various theories about the stages of the spiritual journey and its rules, the rites and ceremonies of wearing the habit, and the protocols of being an elder leader and a novice follower, as well as other complicated proceedings, they had turned the love for the friend into a secret science. In contrast to a few reclusive kindred spirits, many were those who wore the Sufi habit and their leaders, who especially in those days were the confidants of bloodthirsty rulers. The Sufi elder was a drinking companion of the religious inquisitor and an associate and intimate friend of the prominent figures of the government and the political elite of the country. The faith of the Sufis was the wealth of the elder, the sect, and the hierarchy of the organization of the government; and the followers were his subjects. He was the commander of all the followers and an ally of other rulers. Before God’s people, he would pretend to prostrate himself on his prayer rug and would not rest in his beneficence; but in private, he acted “in a wholly different way,”⁸² and in every instance, hypocritically.

The poet, that clever, free-spirited libertine, could see that neither the knowledge of the former group nor the piety of the latter would accomplish anything. But he also knew that whoever embarks on a quest for the water of life without the help of Khezr would in the end return like Alexander, empty-handed.

God created man and the world with intermediaries: through the Essences,⁸³ the Holy Spirit, the First Intellect,⁸⁴ and so on. In every religion and creed, reuniting with him involves learning from the prophets, saints, and guides, or going through various stages and following the path of physical and spiritual experiences. In Iranian mysticism, the idealized elder and leader who is the manifestation of either the Holy Spirit, Gabriel, or Khezr is the knot that ties the human hand to God’s string. Hafez’s Holy Spirit is the Magian elder, who blows his Christlike breath into the poet.

So what if the Magian elder became my spiritual leader?

No head exists devoid of some mystery of God.⁸⁵

Among all the well-known spiritual elders, the poet chose the Magian elder as his spiritual guide. His guide to the realm of truth has spent his life in the aberration of unbelief, in the tavern of wine worshippers and the debauched, and his aged eyes have seen much ugliness and much beauty. This “clever libertine who disregards consequences”⁸⁶ and disregards fame and notoriety has engaged in every act, has played every role, has not set his heart on any deception, and has not feared the end. He has regarded this and the next world and science and religion as naught, and he has committed every sin but one: hurting others! Indifferent to the heavenly maidens and the rivers of honey in paradise, heedless of the demons with fiery maces in hell, with a cup of wine, he has removed the rust of sorrow from the heart of the good and the bad.

In the distant past, the magi were religious leaders with esoteric knowledge of divine secrets. They knew astrology, medicine, magic, religious rites and rituals, and they were interpreters of dreams. They knew of the secrets of the sky and the body—the macrocosm and the microcosm—how to affect the lives, deaths, and good fortunes of others, how to read the roles of destiny and the future in the shape and movement of the flames of fire, the ways and customs of conversion to the religion and joining the celestial world; and since they understood the mute language of dreams, they received signs, good tidings, and warnings from the invisible world. The magi were secretive, and because of this, they helped terrestrial humans to enjoy the kindness of God and safeguarded them from the hostility of demons. But the issue of who they were—were they a tribe, a secret sect, or a class—is not very clear. Was Zoroaster himself one of the magi and their master, or did they exist before him and later convert to his creed and become leaders in the benediction of fire?

Our knowledge of the magi is sporadic, based on conjecture, and mostly by way of outsiders who at times recounted what they saw, and most often what they heard. Whatever the truth may be, however, in all pre-Islamic histories, the magi were mentioned among the religious groups, and they engaged in spiritual matters.

In the Islamic period, Muslims interpreting magi (majus) to mean “Zoroastrian” considered them to be worshippers of Hormoz, the god of light, to be fire worshippers and wine drinkers, and they avoided them. The poet chooses just such an undesirable figure as his desired ideal. He turns away from the war among the seventy-two factions,⁸⁷ each of which claims to hold the gem of truth in its own bag alone, and he turns to a lost soul, a lowly, vanquished person who cannot boast of guiding anyone.

Iranian mysticism and mystic poets in particular were cognizant of the monastery of the magi and the Magian elder, and occasionally, they toyed with this idea; but no poet other than Hafez considered the Magian elder his spiritual leader or lived as he did in the aura of the monastery of the Magi.

In that period of disarray after the Mongols, the Ilkhanids, the Atabaks, and others, when the spirit and the home of Iranians were being torn to shreds by bared swords and raw violence, the eternal memory of the Magi, which had been asleep under the cover of oblivion, was awakened in the memory of the poet. This is not to imply that, like a sociologist or a psychologist politician in a chaotic time and with a predisposed plan, he reminded the people about their cultural history so that they would not neglect their interconnectedness and unity. Rather, the fluid ancient spirit of Iranian culture worked within him secretly, lived in his soul, came into being on his tongue, and was born; and the Hafez (memorizer, protector) of secrets became the discoverer of secrets, like water that runs underground and once it reaches amenable land bubbles forth like a spring and gleams from the joy of seeing the sun. A lost memory was returning through poetry. The war and chaos of politics and the social disarray had scattered the people with their distraught consciences, and the star of poetry brought them together around the center of light.

Hafez, of course, was a child of his own time, and with the Koran that he had in his memory and with the Semitic mythology and philosophy, he lived in a Muslim world, and mysticism wove together, like warp and weft, his self-awareness and his knowledge and gave existence to his worldview. Nevertheless, from the soil of the same worldview, the plant of an ancient indigenous idea continually raised its head and created from all this a pleasant and harmonious nature. Mysticism irrigated these “plant temptresses”⁸⁸ that blossomed in the subconscious of the poet and took on a new color and hue with the language of the poet.

In Zoroaster’s Gathas, there is a constant struggle between light and darkness and truthfulness and lies, with a burning desire to see the truth, to look within, and to witness the brightness of the heart’s eye. In Mani’s creed, every seed of light makes an arduous effort to be freed from the darkness of the body and to join in endless light. The God of Love, Izadmehr or Mithra, is born in a cave—like a spring of light—from a rock. The worshippers of Mithra, with seven ceremonies of conversion and with the help of secret sciences, worshipped this mysterious god of light in secret societies and dark Mithraea. The messenger angel, the good-news messenger of the sky who always accompanied it, gave the good tidings of its rise at dawn.

The radiance of ideas of this sort, consciously or unconsciously, infuses the entire Divan and bestows brightness upon it. It seems as though the foundations of the subconscious of the poet should be sought in the distant past, having reached him from memory to memory in various ways through stories, legends, anecdotes, narratives, beliefs, and superstitions, and more than all the traditions of mysticism, written and unwritten, have reached the hidden well of his memory, like internal currents of water, and have every time jetted out from that depth; and as they have come, they have also called him toward them.

The poet’s turning to the Magian elder, whose name is the twin of wine, fire, and light, is the return of the enlightened of the past to the Koran with the generous and accepting heart of Hafez, who had opened its door to any seeker of truth. The ancient and mysterious Magian knowledge that led the way to God’s secret came back to life in him.

Hence, a poet who chose an indigent beggar as his ideal spiritual leader not only escaped like a clever bird from the snare of the learned and the mystics in order to fly freely but, with the adroit wine-worshipping Magian elder, he also reached the light and rapture of inebriation and joined the old Magi, who was a mysterious reminder of old times, in order to reiterate the ancient word in a new language.

i. Hafez’s poems using the same spelling (with a few exceptions) are quoted from Qazvini and Ghani, eds. Divan-e Hafez (Tehran: Amir Kabir Publishers, 1969). [From ghazal 87; the translation of this couplet is from Geoffrey Squires, trans. Hafez: Translations and Interpretations of the Ghazals (Miami: Miami University Press, 2014), 419.]

ii. Last night I saw the angels

tapping at the wine-shop’s door,

And kneading Adam’s dust

and molded it as cups of wine.

[From ghazal 184; the translation of this couplet is from Dick Davis, trans. Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz (New York: Penguin, 2013), 40. See also Squires, Hafez, 356, and Robert Bly and Leonard Lewisohn, trans. The Angels Knocking at the Door: Thirty Poems of Hafez (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008), 39–40. For “the cup that reveals the entire universe,” see endnote 16, and for “water of life,” see endnote 11.]

iii. “Bring the ship of wine, so that we may ride happily / Away from this sea whose shores are invisible.” [From ghazal 428; Squires translates this couplet as follows: “bring me a vessel of wine / so that I may cross the sea / to that undiscovered shore.” Squires, Hafez, 102.]

iv. See the following ghazal [488]:

Dawnin the tavernand the mysterious voice

that acts as my guidesaid

come back againyou that for so long

have frequented this place.

[Squires, Hafez, 325]