Notes
Translator’s Introduction
1. Readers familiar with the books of the late renowned scholar Ali Dashti, who wrote about several major Persian classical poets based mainly on his personal and intellectual experience with their poetry, might find Meskoob’s book to be similar to Dashti’s 1957 Naqshi az Hafez (Tehran: Amir Kabir Publishers, 1978). The resemblance, however, is superficial, since while Dashti writes “about” Hafez and his poetry, Meskoob submerges himself in the ghazals intellectually, spiritually, and emotionally to experience that which the poet has experienced.
2. In the ghazals, Hafez’s first-person speaker is sometimes the singular I and often the plural we. This usage also adds to the inherent ambiguity of the poems. Translators often render the plural persona as singular.
3. From personal correspondence in March 2016. I had just begun translating this book and was not happy with my rendition of the first chapter, when I found that Geoffrey Squires had won the Lois Roth Translation Prize for his translations of Hafez’s ghazals. When I contacted him after more than fifty years and shared my concerns about the work I was doing, he was traveling but kind enough to send this enlightening response.
4. For example, see Dick Davis, “On Not Translating Hafez,” The New England Review 25, no. 1, 2: 310–18.
5. Dick Davis, trans. Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz (New York: Penguin, 2013).
6. Geoffrey Squires, trans. Hafez: Translations and Interpretations of the Ghazals (Miami: Miami University Press, 2014).
7. In my original translation, I had quoted extensively from Davis’s translations. Unfortunately, however, due to disallowance by the private business establishment that holds the copyright to his translations, I had to substantially curtail my use of quotations from Davis’s work.
8. Robert Bly and Leonard Lewisohn, trans. The Angels Knocking at the Door: Thirty Poems of Hafez (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008).
9. Mohammad Qazvini and Qasem Ghani, eds. Divan-e Hafez (Tehran: Amir Kabir Publishers, 1969). The only English translation based on this edition that includes all the ghazals with the numbers that correspond to the original as well as Meskoob’s text is by Reza Saberi, The Poems of Hafez (Lanham MD: University Press of America, 1984). Saberi’s translations are extremely literal and even then, they are not error free.
10. Parviz Natel-Khanlari, Divan-e Ghazaliyyat-e Hafez, 2nd printing (Tehran: Nil Publishers, 1983).
11. For these and many other terms in Hafez’s poetry see the entry, Encyclopaedia Iranica, s.v. “Hafez viii. Hafez and Rendi,” by Franklin Lewis, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/hafez-viii.
12. Khanlari’s edition of Hafez’s poems is also available online.
13. Shahrokh Meskoob, Goftogu dar Bagh (Tehran: Bagh-e Ayeneh Publishers, 1992).
14. M. R. Ghanoonparvar, Translating the Garden (Austin: The University of Texas Press, 2001).
15. Ali Banuazizi, Karnameh-ye Natamam: Darbareh-ye Siyasat va Farhang (Paris: Khavaran Publications, 1994).
Foreword
1. A ghazal is usually a love poem consisting of between seven and twelve couplets. The entire poem has the same meter, and the second hemistich of every couplet has the same rhyme as the first couplet, both hemistiches of which are rhymed. A ghazal is somewhat similar to the English sonnet.
2. From ghazal 20 by Sa’di.
3. Modified line from ghazal 39. The phrase comes from the following couplet: “The sorrow of love is no more than one tale, astonishing that / No matter from whose tongue I hear, it is not repeated.”
4. The quoted phrase is a variation of a segment of the following couplet by Sheykh Mahmud Shabestari: “The world is like tresses, down, a mole, and eyebrows / Each of which is fine where it is.” The couplet is found in his Golshan-e Raz (The Mystic Rose Garden). For more information on The Mystic Rose Garden, see endnote 6 in the chapter, “My Rose-Colored Elder.” Meskoob’s reference is also possibly to ghazal 287. The couplet from this ghazal is translated by Squires, as follows:
sweet your airs and graces
comely your mole and down
beautiful your eyes and your brow
your stature and bearing fine.
(Squires, Hafez, 234)
From This Hidden Fire . . .
From ghazal 87. The title comes from the couplet that is translated as follows:
The flaming torch of the sun
that rises in the eastern sky
is lit from the hidden fire inside my breast.
(Geoffrey Squires, trans. Hafez: Translations and Interpretations of the Ghazals [Miami: Miami University Press, 2014], 419)
1. From ghazal 144. The couplet that contains the phrase is translated by Squires as:
but if you are not prepared
to abandon the house of nature
how can you embark on the spiritual way.
(Squires, 336)
2. From ghazal 342. The phrase “shackled frame of the body” comes from the following couplet: “How can I soar in the celestial air / When trapped in the shackled frame of the body?” Squires translates the couplet as follows:
how can I range like a bird
in the air of paradise
when my body is trapped in contingency
like a prisoner nailed to a board.
(Squires, 333)
For another translation, see Dick Davis, trans. Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz (New York: Penguin, 2013), 124.
3. From ghazal 184. Squires translates the couplets that Meskoob paraphrases in the paragraph as follows:
Last night I dreamed that the angels
were beating at the tavern gate
kneading Adam’s clay
they made measures out of it
the hidden seraphims
the purest of the pure
sat down and drank with me
who beg from door to door
and as “God be thanked that now / there is peace between Him and me.” Squires, 356. See also Davis, 40, for the translation the same couplets.
4. From ghazal 184. The couplet paraphrased by Meskoob also appears in Robert Bly and Leonard Lewisohn, trans. The Angels Knocking at the Door: Thirty Poems of Hafez (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008), 39.
5. Paraphrase of a couplet from ghazal 290. The quoted segment is from the following couplet in this ghazal: “Nurturing the thought of having the capacity of the sea, alas / What is in the mind of this droplet that dreams the impossible?”
6. From ghazal 184. For a different translation, see Bly and Lewisohn, The Angels Knocking, 39.
7. From ghazal 184. Translated in Davis, Faces of Love, 41. Squires translates the couplet as follows:
Since poets first used their pens
to comb the tresses of speech
no one like Hafez has unveiled
the complexion of our minds.
(Squires, Hafez, 356)
See also Bly and Lewisohn, 40.
8. From ghazal 206. The quoted segment comes from a couplet that Squires translates as follows:
if the shadow of the loved one fell upon us lovers
what does it matter
for we wanted him and he was filled with desire.
(Squires, 253)
9. “Ostad-e Azal” or “master of eternal beginning,” meaning God. From ghazal 380. Squires translates the phrase as “eternal Master” in the following couplet from this ghazal:
I am like a parrot placed behind a mirror
what the eternal Master tells me to sayI say.
(Squires, 292)
10. “Angel of good tidings” is my translation of Sorush, who is a special guardian angel in Zoroastrianism.
11. Khezr is a mythical figure dressed in green, a prophet or saint character in Iranian and Islamic mystic tradition, who is associated with Elijah, is believed to have drunk the water of life, the fountain of youth, and is believed to remain alive until the end of time. For a brief historical account of Khezr, see Oliver Leaman, ed., The Qur’an: An Encyclopedia (New York: Routledge, 2006), 343–45.
12. From ghazal 483. Squires, Hafez, 295.
13. From ghazal 37. The phrase is from Squires’s translation, found in the following couplet:
I am slave to he
whose spiritual vocation
is untainted by any lingering attachments
under these wheeling heavens
the velvet blue of the night-sky.
(Squires, 323)
14. From ghazal 37. The phrase translated here as “invisible realm” is contained in the couplet translated as “invisible world.” Bly and Lewisohn, The Angels Knocking, 29.
15. From ghazals 19, 188, 345, and 373. Reference to Moses in the Sinai desert. The couplet from ghazal 19 is: “The night is dark and the path to the Sinai desert, ahead / Where is the fire on Mount Sinai and when the appointed time for meeting?” The couplet in ghazal 188 from which it is taken is as follows: “The shepherd of the Sinai desert sometimes attains his purpose / When he serves Jethro wholeheartedly for several years.” The couplet from ghazal 345 is: “If the fire of Mount Sinai does not help me with the light / What am I to do with the dark night of the Sinai desert?” The couplet from ghazal 373 is:
O You with whom we sealed that covenant
in the valley of faith
let us bring it like Moses to the appointed place
sayingshow your face.
(Squires, Hafez, 302)
In this couplet, Squires translates vadi-ye iman, which I have translated in the previous couplets as “Sinai desert,” as “valley of faith.”
16. From ghazal 187. The phrase “the cup that reveals the universe” here is a translation of jam-e jahan nema, which is the same as jam-e jam or jam-e Jamshid. The couplet from ghazal 187 in which it appears is: “Veils are removed from the earth and the heavens / For anyone who serves the cup that reveals the universe.” See also the couplet from ghazal 143, which is translated by Davis, Faces of Love, 42.
17. Meaning “water of life.” For Khezr and “water of life,” see endnote 11 above.
18. From ghazal 232. Squires translates the couplet that contains the quoted line as follows:
to spend time in the company
of those in authority
is like the longest of long nights
pray for the light of the sun
that it may rise again
(Squires, Hafez, 207)
19. From ghazal 467. The quoted phrase is from the following couplet: “I will not complain about the ill-tempered ascetic, it is inevitable that / Every morning that dawns is followed by evening.”
20. From ghazal 178. The quoted phrase comes from the following couplet: “The morals police chief became a high priest and forgot his own debauchery / It is only my story that is told at every marketplace.” Mohtaseb, translated here as “morals police chief,” is a possible reference to Amir Mobarezeddin, who up to the age of forty drank wine, but then became religious and imposed restrictions on the people.
21. From ghazal 313. The quoted phrase is translated as “the shadows of confusion” in the following couplet: “and with your bright cup that overflows with joy / lead me out of the shadows of confusion.” Squires, Hafez, 96.
22. Persian literature, especially mystic literature, contains stories about Alexander of Macedonia, who accompanied by Khezr (see endnote 11) went to the Land of Darkness in search of the water of life (fountain of youth). Among other sources, this legend is told in Ferdowsi’s Book of Kings and Nezami’s twelfth-century Eskandarnameh. For an English translation of Nezami’s work, see Minoo S. Southgate, trans. Iskandarnamah: A Persian Medieval Alexander-Romance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978).
23. From ghazal 1. Reference to a couplet from this ghazal is available in Davis, Faces of Love, 10.
24. From ghazal 439. Squires, Hafez, 82.
25. From ghazal 183. The couplet containing the phrase I have translated as “blissful dawn” is translated by Davis as “O dawn of Fortune.” Davis, Faces of Love, 44. Squires translates the couplet as:
how blessed that morningand how happy
that night of destinywhen I was set free.
(Squires, 349)
26. From ghazal 488. The couplet paraphrased by Meskoob is translated as:
Dawnin the tavernand the mysterious voice
that acts as my guidesaid
come back againyou that for so long
have frequented this place
and like Jamshid drink from the visionary cup
whose rays disclose the secrets of heaven and earth.
(Squires, 325)
27. From ghazal 182. For an English translation of the quoted couplets containing part of what Meskoob has paraphrased, see Davis, Faces of Love, 67.
28. From ghazal 183. The phrase “from the shackles of life’s sorrows” is from the following couplet: “It was Hafez’s aspiration and the breath of the risers at dawn / That saved me from the shackles of life’s sorrows.” The couplet is also translated by Davis, 44. Squires translates the same couplet as follows:
through faith
and the breath of those who rise to pray at dawn
I have been freed from the grievous bonds of time.
(Squires, Hafez, 349)
The quoted hemistich is from Davis, 44. Squires translates the couplet as:
Last nightbefore dawnI knew deliverance
in the darkness I was given the Water of Life.
(Squires, 349)
29. Hafez is often referred to as Lesan ol-Gheyb (the Tongue of the Invisible).
30. From ghazal 381. The quoted phrase is from the couplet translated as follows:
Although I am a servant of the king
when I say my morning prayers
I am monarch of the kingdom of dawn.
(Squires, Hafez, 190)
31. From ghazal 176. The phrase I have translated as “the beloved king” in Persian is “khosrow-e shirin,” which could also be an allusion to Nezami’s romance narrative poem, Khosrow and Shirin.
32. Phrases from ghazals 33 and 6. Squires translates the couplet from ghazal 33, which includes the phrase I have translated as “chosen seclusion,” as:
What need have I of society
when I have you
why should I want company
when I can be alone with you
why should I criss-cross the desert
when I know where you dwell
why should I beg when I am in
the very presence of munificence.
(Squires, Hafez, 368)
See also Bly and Lewisohn, The Angels Knocking, 37–38.
33. Paraphrase of the first couplet of ghazal 183. See endnote 28 above.
34. From ghazal 381. Squires, Hafez, 190.
35. From ghazal 111. For another translation of the couplet containing the quoted segment, see Bly and Lewisohn, The Angels Knocking, 57.
36. From ghazal 183. The couplet that contains the quoted line is translated as:
for turning my face towards the mirror of beauty
I saw what it was therethat was true.
(Squires, Hafez, 349)
See also Davis, Faces of Love, 44.
37. From ghazal 90. Squires, 13.
38. Jamshid was the legendary Persian king who is credited with the invention of wine and many other things that made life more comfortable and secure for his people. See Rudi Mathee, “Wine and Wine Drinking in Iran (Persia)” in M. R. Ghanoonparvar, Traditional, Regional, and Modern Foods (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2006), 260–65.
39. From ghazal 187.
40. Keykhosrow was a legendary king of Persia who appears in Ferdowsi’s Book of Kings.
41. Paraphrase from ghazal 143. The couplet paraphrased by Meskoob is translated by Davis, Faces of Love, 42, and by Bly and Lewisohn, The Angels Knocking, 27.
42. This line is from a poem in praise of wine (qasideh no. 49) by the eleventh-century Persian poet, Manuchehri-Damghani.
43. From ghazal 116. A rather literal translation of the couplet that Meskoob paraphrases is: “If wine has no other benefit for you, it is enough / that, for a moment, it makes one unaware of the temptations of reason.”
44. Paraphrase of the first couplet from ghazal 129. My translation of this couplet is: “If not for wine that makes our heart forget its sorrow, / the dread of events would uproot our foundation.”
45. From ghazal 278. Squires, Hafez, 83.
46. Perhaps a reference to ghazal 423. Squires translates the couplet that contains the quoted phrase as:
in your lust for the lips of young boys
how long will you go on
staining the pure jewel of the spirit
with liquid ruby
(Squires, 93)
See also Bly and Lewisohn, The Angels Knocking, 5.
47. Reference to the following couplet from ghazal 90:
in the beauty of your faceadmire God’s handiwork
in the mirror of my heartbehold the divine.
(Squires, 13)
48. This segment is a paraphrase of ghazal 111, including the following couplets:
When the image of your face
was reflected in the wine
the laughing cup sent the seer wild with desire
since the very first day
when you appeared veiled before mankind
people have perceived only the mirror of illusion.
(Squires, 103)
For another translation of the same couplets, see Bly and Lewisohn, The Angels Knocking, 57.
49. From ghazal 119. The couplet that contains the quoted line is as follows: “The heart that reveals the unseen and holds the cup of Jamshid / What care does it have if a precious stone is lost for a moment?”
50. From ghazal 263.
51. From ghazal 263.
52. From ghazal 348.
53. From ghazal 263. This is a reference to the above-quoted couplet: “If you must have sunlight at midnight, cast off the veil / From the rosy face of the daughter of the vine.”
54. From Hafez’s poem, “Saqinameh.” Saqinameh is a term that refers to poems addressed to a saqi, or a cupbearer, involving themes such as death and the transiency of the world. This is a paraphrase from the following couplet in this poem: “Cupbearer, give me the wine from which the cup of Jamshid / Boasts of sight in nonexistence.”
55. From ghazal 266. Squires, Hafez, 153. See also Davis, Faces of Love, 111.
56. From ghazal 111. The couplet that contains the quoted line is also translated in Bly and Lewisohn, The Angels Knocking, 57.
57. From ghazal 232. Squires translates the couplet that contains the quoted line as follows:
the theater of the heart
has no room for adversaries
when the devil leavesthe angel makes its entry.
(Squires, Hafez, 207)
58. From ghazal 37. See also Bly and Lewisohn, The Angels Knocking, 29.
59. From ghazal 263. A translation of the couplet to which Meskoob refers is as follows: “When your heart aches from the cruelty of the wheel of time, Hafez / Shoot an arrow of a meteor at the demon of suffering.”
60. From ghazal 218. The couplet to which Meskoob refers is as follows: “Without the lamp of the cup, I cannot rest in seclusion / Because the people of the heart’s corner must be illuminated.”
61. From ghazal 234. Squires’s translation of the couplet that is paraphrased by Meskoob is as follows:
As the sun of wine rises in the east of the cup
the cheeks of the serving-boy
bloom like a garden of tulips.
(Squires, Hafez, 100)
62. From ghazal 413. Paraphrase of the following couplets: “The down of the beloved’s face that eclipsed the moon / is a beautiful ring, of which there is no way out” and “Oh cup-bearer, bring the lamp of wine on the path of the sun / And let it light the torch of morning.”
63. From ghazal 488. Squires, Hafez, 325.
64. From ghazal 488. Squires’s translation of the verse paraphrased by Meskoob is as follows: “do not venture this far without Khezr your guide / for fear of losing your way in the dark.” Squires, 325.
65. From ghazal 149. The couplet from which the quoted phrase is taken is: “The lovers have such joy with his ruby wine since / it holds no engraved image other than truthfulness.”
66. From ghazal 28. The entire couplet from which this line is quoted is: “Strive to be truthful and the sun will be born from your breath / For the false dawn’s face was blackened from falsehood.”
67. This is a reference to a ghazal that is not included in the Qazvini and Ghani edition of the Divan. In Davis’s translation it begins with the following couplet: “Good news, my heart! The breath of Christ is wafting here / Its sweetness brings the scent of One who’ll soon appear.” Davis, Faces of Love, 69.
68. From ghazal 488. In Iranian ancient popular mythology, it was believed that the earth is held by the horns of a bull that stands on the top of a fish. See Sadeq Hedayat, Neyrangestan, 3rd ed. (Tehran: Amir Kabir Publishers, 1963), 171. The couplet summarized by Meskoob appears in Squires’s translation as follows:
O heart if you are granted
the suzerainty of poverty
the smallest of your provinces will extend
from the moon to the earth’s foundations.
(Squires, Hafez, 325)
69. Simorgh is a benevolent, Iranian, mythical bird of enormous size that appears in many works of art and literature. For more detail, see the entry in Encyclopaedia Iranica, s.v. “simorg,” http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/simorg.
70. Paraphrase of two couplets from ghazal 488, which are translated as follows:
but my Lord
what do you know of poverty
do not give up the privileges you enjoy
at the court of Turanshah
Hafez
have you no shame at this display of greed
what have you done
to ask for this and the next world as reward
(Squires, Hafez, 325)
71. From ghazal 199. The Persian verb, mokhammar mikonand, translated here as “leaven,” also means “ferment.” See also Davis, Faces of Love, 79 for a translation of the couplet that is paraphrased here by Meskoob.
72. From ghazal 428. The couplet from which the quoted phrase is taken is as follows: “Bring the ship of wine, so that we may ride happily / Away from this sea whose shores are invisible.”
73. From ghazal 313. The quoted phrase is translated as “bright cup” in the following rendition of the couplet: “and with your bright cup that overflows with joy / lead me out of the shadows of confusion.” Squires, Hafez, 96.
74. From ghazal 405. The couplet from which this phrase is taken is: “Should you find a head on the threshold of the tavern / Do not kick it, for his intentions are not clear.”
75. From ghazal 196. The phrase comes from the following couplet: “Those who turn dust into gold with a glance / For them to look our way, is there a chance?”
76. From ghazal 357. Squires, Hafez, 101.
77. From ghazals 27 and 490. The couplet that contains the phrase “monastery of the Magi” from ghazal 27 is as follows: “Into the monastery of the Magi came my beloved with goblet in hand / Drunk from wine, and the wine drinkers drunk from her drunken narcissus eyes.” Squires translates the same phrase as “the temple of wine” in his rendition:
I drink in your drunken eyes
as drunk you make your entrance
to the temple of wine.
(Squires, 404)
The phrase also appears in the following couplet from ghazal 490: “In all the monastery of the Magi, no one is as frenzied as I am / With my robe pawned somewhere and my wine and notebook, somewhere else.” Squires translates the same couplet as:
In all these ruined Temples
there is no one as foolish as me
who has pawned his gown one place
and his notebook somewhere else.
(Squires, 297)
78. From ghazal 144. The couplet that contains the phrase is translated as:
but if you are not prepared
to abandon the house of nature
how can you embark on the spiritual way.
(Squires, 336)
79. From Hafez’s poem, “Ahu-ye Vahshi” (The Wild Deer). The quoted phrase is found in the following couplet from this poem: “Beside a spring, by a stream / With moist eyes in a conversation with the self.”
80. From ghazal 357. The couplet that contains the quoted paraphrased phrase is translated as follows:
In this ruined Magian den
I see the light of the divine
strangethis lightand that I perceive it
here of all places.
(Squires, Hafez, 101)
81. Hafez means “memorizer” (of the Koran).
82. From ghazal 199. Davis, Faces of Love, 78.
83. The Persian is foruharha, meaning Essences in Zoroastrianism.
84. In ancient Peripatetic philosophy, that which is issued from God’s essence for the first time.
85. From ghazal 69.
86. From ghazal 177. The quoted phrase is from the following couplet: “I am a slave to the aspirations of that clever libertine who disregards consequences / And who, even though a beggar, knows how to make gold.”
87. From ghazal 184. For a translation of the paraphrased couplet, see Davis, Faces of Love, 40. Squires translates the same couplet as:
there is some excuse for
the unending wars of religion
for unable to see reality
people cling to illusion.
(Squires, Hafez, 356)
88. From ghazal 173. The quoted phrase is from the following couplet: “The plant temptresses all adorned themselves / It is only our beloved who came with God-given beauty.”
My Rose-Colored Elder . . .
From ghazal 203. The title of this chapter is taken from the following couplet: “My rose-colored elder, regarding the blue attired / Gave me no chance; else there were stories to be told.”
1. From ghazal 39. The phrase comes from the following couplet: “The sorrow of love is no more than one tale, astonishing that / No matter from whose tongue I hear, it is not repeated.”
2. From ghazal 310.
3. From ghazal 193. The quoted line is from the following couplet: “The worldly wise are the pivot of the compass of existence, but / Love knows that they are bewildered within this circle.” Squires translates this couplet as:
reason would suggest
that we are the pivot of the compass
but love knows we are spinning round.
(Geoffrey Squires, trans. Hafez: Translations and Interpretations of the Ghazals [Miami: Miami University Press, 2014], 305)
4. From ghazal 452. The quoted phrase is from the following couplet: “Humans and spirits are dependent on the existence of love / Devote yourself to love to enjoy its bliss.”
5. From ghazal 127. Squires translates this line as: “have you ever seen a mirror not clouded with sighs.” Squires, Hafez, 262.
6. In Persian, Golshan-e Raz is a collection of poems written by the fourteenth-century Persian mystic Mahmud Shabestari. For an English translation and commentary online see E. H. Whinfield, trans. Gulshan I Raz: The Mystic Rose Garden, Internet Archive, http://www.archive.org/stream/gulshanirazmysti00shabuoft/gulshanirazmysti00shabuoft_djvu.txt.
7. From ghazal 286. Dick Davis, trans. Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz (New York: Penguin, 2013), 100.
8. From ghazal 317. The quoted phrase is rendered as “bird from paradise.” Davis, 114.
9. “Old wolf” is a reference to the world. From the following consecutive couplets in Hafez’s poem, “Saqinameh”:
Come, cupbearer, bring me that juice that burns the mind
That would make the lion burn the forest, should he drink it
Give it to me, that I may go to the firmament as a lion-catcher
To turn the trap of this old wolf upside down.
10. From ghazal 126. The phrase “beauty of the beloved” comes from the following couplet in this ghazal: “Without the beauty of the beloved, the soul does not desire the world / Anyone who does not have this truly does not have that.”
11. From ghazal 286. The phrase “to your health” is from the following couplet: “Then he handed me a cup from the brightness of which in the heavens / Venus began to dance and play the harp, cheering ‘to your health.’” See also Davis, Faces of Love, 100.
12. For the most part, this segment is a paraphrase of ghazal 286.
13. The quoted line is from the following couplet: “Heed my advice, son, be not sad about the world / I gave you a pearl of wisdom, if you are able to grasp it.” See also Davis, Faces of Love, 100.
14. From the following couplet from ghazal 18 by Sa’di: “Eating, sleeping, anger, and carnal desire mean chaos, ignorance, and darkness / Animals have no knowledge of the world of humankind.”
15. From ghazal 286. See also Davis, Faces of Love, 101. “Imperial monarch” (sahabqeran in Persian) is rendered as “the Lord of Time” in Davis’s translation.
16. From ghazal 159. The quoted line is from the following couplet: “One raised in affluence will not find his way to the friend / Being in love is the manner of clever libertines who can withstand calamity.” See also Davis, Faces of Love, 68.
17. Reference to the couplet from ghazal 286 cited above.
18. From ghazal 94. The phrase “guiding star” comes from the following couplet: “In this dark night of mine, I have lost my way / Come into view from where you are, oh guiding star.” Squires translates the couplet as follows:
in this dark night I cannot see
where I am going
let the Pole Star come out of hiding
and point me the way.
(Squires, Hafez, 269)
19. The quoted segment is a paraphrase of the second line of the following couplet from Rumi’s Masnavi: “The green garden of love which is endless / Has many fruits but sorrow and happiness”; from Mowlavi (Jalalu’ddin Rumi), The Mathnawi, ed. Reynold A. Nicholson, 3rd ed. (Tehran: Hermes Publishers, 2007), 81.
20. From ghazal 22. The couplet that contains the phrase is: “I know not who is inside my wounded heart / That I am silent while he cries and roars.” Squires, translates the couplet as follows:
I do not know
who this person is within me
I who am heartsore
for when I am quiethe is in uproar.
(Squires, Hafez, 281)
21. From ghazal 428. Squires translates this line, as follows: “our existence is an enigma / our answers only fables and spells.” Squires, 102.
22. From ghazal 440. The quoted phrase is from the following couplet: “At dawn I was reciting to the wind the story of longing / When a voice said, ‘Be aware of God’s favor.’” Squires translates the couplet as follows:
I confided in the windall my fond hopes
trust in God’s gracethe wind replied.
(Squires, 294)
23. From ghazal 317. See also Davis, Faces of Love, 114.
24. In this and the previous two paragraphs, the author’s persona speaks in the same voice as Hafez.
25. In Persian, the phrase that I have translated as “flourishing ruins” is kharababad. Meskoob points out later that Hafez distinguishes between this concept and other concepts that he uses to describe the world as ruins.
26. From ghazal 343. Squires, Hafez, 205.
27. From ghazal 266. Davis, Faces of Love, 111.
28. From ghazal 492. The quoted phrase is from the following couplet: “Greetings, like the fragrant scent of friendship / To that pupil of the eye of brightness.”
29. From ghazal 383. The quoted phrase is from the following couplet: “You would not have become enchanted by the world / Had you listened to the advice of the literati.”
30. From ghazal 154. Here, Meskoob quotes the first line of the eighth couplet and the last line of the final couplet of this ghazal. The eighth couplet is as follows: “Love, youth, and being a clever libertine are all we desire / Once all these come together, one can strike the ball of speech.” The final couplet is as follows: “For the sake of the Koran, turn away from deception and hypocrisy / Perhaps in the meantime, one could strike the polo ball of some pleasure.”
31. From ghazal 230. The quoted phrase is from the following couplet: “The bride of the world is a beauty, but be warned / This lady will not wed anyone.”
32. From ghazal 310. The lote tree (sedrat al-montaha) is a tree in paradise beyond which angels are not allowed and do not have the ability to go.
33. From ghazal 353. My translation. For other translations, see also Davis, Faces of Love, 48; Robert Bly and Leonard Lewisohn, trans. The Angels Knocking at the Door: Thirty Poems of Hafez (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008), 51; Abbas Aryanpur Kashani, trans. Odes of Hafiz: Poetical Horiscope (Lexington, KY: Mazda Publishers, 1984), 226; and Squires, Hafez, 347.
34. From ghazal 248. The quoted phrase is from the following couplet:
O boy
do not put back today’s pleasures till tomorrow
or else bring me a written guarantee from fate.
(Squires, 142)
35. This is a paraphrase of the following couplet in ghazal 340: “My father [Adam] sold the garden of paradise for two grains of wheat / Why shouldn’t I sell the kingdom of the world for one grain of barley?”
36. From ghazal 429. The couplet from which the quoted phrase is taken is as follows: “Hey, sober up, for the bird in the meadow is inebriated / Hey, wake up, for the sleep of nonexistence is imminent.”
37. From ghazal 429.
38. From ghazal 359. The quoted line comes from the following couplet:
Happy the day I move onfrom this desolate staging-post
in search of my loveand comfort for my soul.
(Squires, Hafez, 391)
39. From ghazal 37. Squires’s translation of this couplet is as follows:
do you not hear the falconer’s command
from the high turrets of heaven
calling you home.
(Squires, 322)
Bly and Lewisohn translate the couplet as:
People on the battlements of heaven are
Blowing a whistle to bring you back.
How does it happen that you tripped the noose?
(Bly and Lewisohn, The Angels Knocking, 29)
40. Paraphrase of a couplet from ghazal 111:
if I have gone downhill from mosque to tavern
it was not me but the working out of fate
how can we stop revolving like a compass
we who have fallen into the cycle of days.
(Squires, 103)
See also Bly and Lewisohn, 57.
41. From ghazal 335.
42. From ghazal 387.
43. From ghazal 150. The couplet containing the quoted phrase from ghazal 150 is as follows: “And if she places under the curl of her locks the seed that is the mole / Most likely she would ensnare the bird of wisdom.” The term daneh-ye khal, which I have translated as “the seed that is the mole,” is translated by Squires as “the grain of his mole” in his translation of the same couplet:
and if he carefully arranges his hair
to cover the grain of his mole
how many wise birds will then fall into his snare.
(Squires, Hafez, 92)
44. From ghazal 342. Davis, Faces of Love, 124. Squires’s translation of this couplet is as follows:
The dust of my body
veils the face of my soul
blessed be the moment
I remove that veil.
(Squires, 333)
45. From ghazal 342. The sentence including the quoted phrase is a paraphrase of the following couplet: “How can I soar in the celestial air / When trapped in the shackled frame of the body?” See also Davis, 124. Squires translates the couplet as follows:
how can I range like a bird
in the air of paradise
when my body is trapped in contingency
like a prisoner nailed to a board.
(Squires, 333)
46. From ghazal 428. The couplet from which the quoted phrases are taken is as follows: “The companion, the minstrel, and the cupbearer are all him / The illusion of water and clay is an excuse on the way.”
47. From Hafez’s, “The Wild Deer.” The quoted line from this poem is found in the following couplet: “Two lonely beings, two wanderers, two who have no one / Wild beasts and traps in ambush behind and ahead.”
48. From ghazal 485.
49. From ghazal 199. This is a reference to the couplet that is translated in Davis, Faces of Love, 78. Squires translates the couplet:
These preachers who make great show
in the mehrab and the pulpit
when they are in private
get up to other things.
(Squires, Hafez, 287)
50. From ghazal 200. Davis, 57.
51. From ghazal 352. Squires translates the couplet that contains the quoted phrase as follows:
O you who in your mercy veils our faults
hide from the gaze of those who wish me ill
these audacious thoughts I have when I am alone
(Squires, Hafez, 373)
52. From ghazal 290. The quoted phrase comes from the following couplet: “I tremble like the willow tree over my faith / For my heart is in the hands of an infidel with bowed eyebrows.”
53. From ghazal 144. The couplet that contains the phrase is translated by Squires as:
but if you are not prepared
to abandon the house of nature
how can you embark on the spiritual way.
(Squires, Hafez, 336)
54. From ghazal 400. A paraphrase of the following couplet: “I fear my faith will be ruined since / The prayer niche of your eyebrow removes my presence of mind for prayers.”
55. From ghazal 400. The quoted phrase comes from the following couplet: “My tall, coquettish, cunning beloved / Cut short my tall tale of piety.”
56. From ghazal 9. The couplet paraphrased by Meskoob is translated as follows:
I suspect that those who mock us revelers
may at the end of the day
ruin their faith in this place of ruination.
(Squires, Hafez, 55)
57. From ghazal 343. Squires, 205.
58. From ghazal 194. The quoted line is taken from the following couplet: “Like Mansur, those who have reached their goal are on the gallows / As they call Hafez to this threshold, they drive him away.”
59. From ghazal 286. The quoted phrase is from the following couplet: “Heed my advice, son, be not sad about the world / I gave you a pearl of wisdom, if you are able to grasp it.” See also Davis, Faces of Love, 100.
60. From ghazal 159. Davis, 68.
61. From ghazal 346. The couplet is Hafez’s typical manner of giving his patron, possibly Shah Shoja’, a backhanded compliment by calling him generous (the undiminishing spring of the sun) and at the same time refusing to beg. I am indebted to M. M. Khorrami for providing the relevant explanations for this couplet.
62. From ghazal 492. Aryanpur, Odes of Hafiz, 262.
63. From ghazal 492.
64. From ghazal 346. See endnote 61 above.
65. From ghazal 354.
66. From ghazal 290.
67. From ghazal 303. The quoted line is from the following couplet: “But for the thought of your lips, nothing exists in my yearning heart / May no one be in search of an impossible dream.”
68. From ghazal 143. See also Davis, Faces of Love, 43, and Bly and Lewisohn, The Angels Knocking, 27.
69. From ghazal 348. The quoted line is contained in the following couplet from this ghazal: “The source of happiness lies where the beloved is / I will endeavor to perhaps hurl myself there.”
Another World . . .
From ghazal 470. The chapter title comes from the following couplet: “Humans cannot be found in the terrestrial world / Another world must be built, and an Adam anew.”
1. From ghazal 348. See endnote 69 in the chapter “My Rose-Colored Elder.”
2. From ghazal 232. Squires translates the couplet that contains the quoted line, as follows:
the theater of the heart
has no room for adversaries
when the devil leavesthe angel makes its entry.
(Geoffrey Squires, trans. Hafez: Translations and Interpretations of the Ghazals [Miami: Miami University Press, 2014], 207)
3. From ghazal 276. The quoted phrase is from the following couplet: “Oh heart entrapped by her tresses, lament not your distress / When a clever bird falls into a trap, it must persevere.”
4. From ghazal 470.
5. In ancient Zoroastrian beliefs, air, water, earth, and fire were considered the sacred elements of which the entire world is made.
6. From ghazal 341. The quoted phrase comes from the following couplet: “Whether or not I drink wine, why bother with others / I am the keeper of my own secret and the knower of my time.” Squires translates the couplet as follows:
what business is it of any of you
whether I indulge or not
Hafezever mysterious
spirit of the age.
(Squires, Hafez, 359)
7. From ghazal 379. The quoted phrase is from the following couplet: “Scold me not for growing on my own in this meadow / I grow as they nurture me.”
8. From ghazal 374. The quoted line is a paraphrase of the following couplet: “They do not know of eloquent words and pleasant singing in Shiraz / Come, Hafez, let us hurl ourselves to another kingdom.” See also Dick Davis, trans. Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz (New York: Penguin, 2013), 23. Squires translates the couplet as:
in Shiraz it seems
no one values eloquence or verse
come Hafez
take yourself and us to some other place.
(Squires, Hafez, 110)
9. From ghazal 374. See also Davis, 22.
10. From ghazal 11. The quoted phrase is from a couplet that Squires translates as follows: “O you who know nothing of the pleasures of drinking / know that we have seen our beloved’s face in the cup.” Squires, Hafez, 72.
11. Yamakan or Yamagan is a village in which the eleventh-century Persian poet, philosopher, and Isma’ili scholar and religious leader, Naser Khosrow, spent the final years of his life. “The angry spokesman of Yamakan” is a reference to Naser Khosrow and his often indignant anger toward Sunni religious leaders, among others. For an enlightening account of Naser Khosrow, see Alice C. Hunsberger, Nasir Khusraw, the Ruby of Badakhshan: A Portrait of the Persian Poet, Traveller and Philosopher (London: I. B. Tauris, 2000).
12. The reference is to Hasan Sabbah, the tenth- and eleventh-century Isma’ili leader and propagator and his fortress, Alamut, located in northern Iran.
13. From ghazal 189.
14. From ghazal 281. The quoted phrase comes from the following couplet: “Even though she has moved a hundred stages away from the alley of loyalty / May the blight of the revolving of the firmament in the soul and body not affect her.”
15. From ghazal 470. The paraphrase and the quoted phrase refer to the following couplets that follow each other in this ghazal:
The happy and the pampered have no path to the alley of clever libertines
A wayfarer who burns down the world is allowed, not an inexperienced man without sorrow
Humans cannot be found in the terrestrial world
Another world must be built, and an Adam anew.
16. From ghazal 407. The quoted phrase is from the following couplet: “If like Christ you go to the heavens, pure and incorporeal / A hundred rays will reach the sun from your lamp.”
17. From ghazal 407.
18. From ghazal 374. The quoted phrase is from the couplet that Squires translates, p. 110, as follows:
Come let us scatter petalsfill the cup
shatter heaven’s vaultand then rebuild anew.
19. From ghazal 374. The quoted phrase is from the couplet that Squires translates as follows:
O minstrel since you have a melodious lute to hand
play us a fine tune
so that waving our hands and stamping our feet
we may sing out a heady ghazal.
(Squires, Hafez, 110)
For a different translation of this couplet, see Davis, Faces of Love, 22.
20. Meskoob here uses sarvar-e dana, which is the modern Persian translation for Ahura Mazda.
21. By using the adjective old for Zoroaster, Meskoob is perhaps alluding to ghazal 3, in which Hafez uses pir-e dana (wise elder).
22. This is Meskoob’s paraphrase of the fifth couplet of ghazal 374. For a translation of the couplet, see Davis, Faces of Love, 22.
23. From ghazal 69. The quoted phrase is a paraphrase of a line from the following couplet: “So what if the Magian elder became my spiritual leader? / No head exists devoid of some mystery of God.”
24. From the following couplet in ghazal 66: “Love arises from a hidden subtlety / Called neither ruby lips nor rust-colored down.”
25. From ghazal 428. The quoted phrase is a paraphrase of a line from the following couplet: “Our existence is a puzzle, Hafez / The solving of which is the stuff of sorcery and fable.” Squires translates the same couplet as:
Hafezour existence is an enigma
our answersonly fables and spells.
(Squires, Hafez, 102)
26. From ghazal 193. Squires translates this couplet as follows:
reason would suggest
that we are the pivot of the compass
but love knows we are spinning round.
(Squires, 305)
27. From ghazal 203. The quoted phrase is a paraphrase of the following couplet: “Like the compass, the heart turned in every direction / And within that circle, it was a static wanderer.” Squires translates the same couplet as: “Like a compass the heart spun in every direction / even at its center it turned upon itself.” Squires, 324.
28. From ghazal 71. The quoted line is from the following couplet: “What is this simple high ceiling full of images / No sage in the world knows the answer to this puzzle.”
29. From ghazal 71.
30. From ghazal 87 by the eleventh- and twelfth-century Persian poet, Sana’i. The quoted phrase refers to the following couplet: “Like a flower, you were all body; thus it was as long as it was / Like wine, she became life; let it be thus as long as it will be.”
31. From ghazal 3. See also Davis, Faces of Love, 128. Squires translates the same couplet as follows:
come speak of minstrels and wineand less of fate
for no wise man has ever unpicked that knot
or will.
(Squires, Hafez, 401)
32. From ghazal 184. The phrase “seventy-two factions,” sometimes translated as “sects,” is from the following couplet: “The war of the seventy-two factions, leave all that aside / They followed the path of myth, since they did not see the truth.” See also Davis, 40.
33. From ghazal 206. The quoted segment is from the following couplet in Squires’s translation:
if the shadow of the loved one fell upon us lovers
what does it matter
for we wanted him and he was filled with desire.
(Squires, Hafez, 253)
34. From ghazal 428. My translation of these couplets. Squires translates only a few couplets from this ghazal; his translation of the second line of the second couplet is as follows: “the earthly image of water and clay / simply a means a way.” Squires, 102.
35. From ghazal 193. The couplet that is summarized by Meskoob is translated by Squires as follows:
my eyes are not the only place
where your face appears
sun and moon act as its mirror also.
(Squires, 305)
36. Mansur Hallaj was a ninth- and tenth-century Persian Sufi who is famous for having proclaimed, “I am the Truth” or “I am God,” because of which, it is commonly believed, he was executed by hanging.
37. Bayazid Bastami was a ninth-century Persian Sufi who is known as the King of the Mystics, and who is believed to have attained unity with God.
38. From ghazal 428. The quoted line is from the following couplet: “How can one benefit from union with the beauty of a king / Who is in love with himself for all eternity?”
39. From a poem in the prologue of Sa’di’s Golestan (Flower Garden). The following lines from which Meskoob uses the phrase are found in some versions of Golestan:
The four opposing unruly humors
Are happy together for a few days
When one of these four becomes dominant
Sweet life leaves its frame.
40. From ghazal 48.
41. From Hafez’s “Saqinameh.” Old wolf here means “the world.” From the following consecutive couplets in Hafez’s poem, “Saqinameh”:
Come, cupbearer, bring me that juice that burns the mind
That would make the lion burn the forest, should he drink
it Give it to me, that I may go to the firmament as a lion-catcher
To turn the trap of this old wolf upside down.
42. From ghazal 48.
43. From qasideh 30 by the fourteenth-century Persian poet, Obeyd Zakani, a contemporary of Hafez, in praise of Amidolmolk, the vizier. The quoted line is from the following couplet: “The enemy dreams delusively about his position / Such false delusions, such an impossible dream.”
44. From ghazal 184. Meskoob paraphrases the following couplet: “The heavens could not endure the burden of trust / They drew lots and the name of crazy me was drawn.” See also Davis, Faces of Love, 40. Squires translates the same couplet as:
the angels could not bear
the weight of heaven’s trust
so the lot fell to man
and this one who is insane.
(Squires, Hafez, 356)
45. From ghazal 178. The couplet paraphrased by Meskoob appears in Squires’s translation as follows:
I have heard nothing sweeter than the song of love
which is the only reminder
we have of our lives
beneath this circling cupola of the sky.
(Squires, 344)
46. From ghazal 380. The phrase rendered as “the master of eternal beginning” is translated as “eternal Master” in the following couplet:
I am like a parrot placed behind a mirror
what the eternal Master tells me to sayI say.
(Squires, 292)
47. From ghazal 117. Squires translates this couplet as follows:
how could I find my way in the darkness
through the twists and turns of your curls
did not your face illumine them like a lamp.
(Squires, 60)
48. From ghazal 26. The phrase translated here as “disheveled hair” comes from the couplet that Squires translates as follows:
Halfway through the night you came to the side of my bed
wine in handblouse tornand your hair all over the place.
(Squires, 23)
Davis translates the phrase as “Her hair hung loose.” Davis, Faces of Love, 4. Bly and Lewisohn, translate it as “Her hair was still tangled.” Robert Bly and Leonard Lewisohn, trans. The Angels Knocking at the Door: Thirty Poems of Hafez (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008), 7–8.
49. From ghazal 244. Islamic law requires the performance of special prayers by the side of a deceased person before burial.
50. From ghazal 117. See the set-off couplet marked by endnote 47 above.
51. From ghazal 152. Squires, Hafez, 340.
52. From ghazal 387.
53. From ghazal 435. The quotation comes from the couplet that Squires translates as follows:
Let those who are full of themselves
die in themselves
let them not know the ekstasis of love.
(Squires, Hafez, 91)
54. From ghazal 435. My translation. See also Bly and Lewisohn, The Angels Knocking, 49.
55. From ghazal 366. The translation of the phrase is mine. See a translation of the couplet in Davis, Faces of Love, 86. Squires translates this couplet as follows:
from the edge of nothingness we have found our way
to the house of love
we have made the long journey to the province of being.
(Squires, Hafez, 330)
56. From ghazal 11. The quoted line is from Squires’s translation of the following couplet: “he who finds life through love will never die / for in time’s register we shall live for ever.” Squires, 72.
57. From ghazal 206. Squires, 253. Reuben Levy translates the couplet, as: “From the dawn of past eternity to the end of everlasting night / our fond love rested on one firm pact and one covenant.” An Introduction to Persian Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), 133.
58. From ghazal 206. Squires translates the couplet from which the quoted passage is taken as follows:
before that green roof and enamelled vault
were raised to the skymy eyes
were fixed on the vault of my beloved’s eyebrow.
(Squires, 253)
Levy translates the same couplet as follows: “Long ago, when this green roof and azure sky were being raised above / my beloved’s eyebrow formed an archway to the vision of my eye.” Levy, 133.
59. Paraphrase of a couplet in ghazal 178. The couplet is translated by Squires as follows: “my heart alone has loved from Beginning to End / I know of no one else who has been so faithful.” Squires, 344.
60. Paraphrase of a line from ghazal 22. The paraphrase comes from the following couplet: “They endear me in the monastery of the Magi / Since the fire that never dies is in my heart.” Squires translates the couplet, as follows:
it is for this that the Magi
hold me in such high esteem
that in my heart there is
an inextinguishable flame.
(Squires, 341)
61. From ghazal 60.
62. From ghazal 407. Paraphrase of the following couplet: “Say to the skies, do not sell me your grandeur, since in love / the harvest of the moon is bartered for one grain of barley, and the cluster of the Pleiades, for two.” See also Davis, Faces of Love, 37.
63. From Book One of Rumi’s Masnavi. Line from the following couplet: “Wine became intoxicated from us, not we from it / The world was created because of us, not we because of it.” In most versions of this line, qaleb (frame, form) is used instead of alam (world).
64. From ghazal 317. For another translation of this line, see Davis, Faces of Love, 114.
65. From ghazal 90. Squires, Hafez, 13.
66. Modified paraphrase of a line from ghazal 193. The couplet from which Meskoob paraphrases is translated by Squires as follows:
my eyes are not the only place
where your face appears
sun and moon act as its mirror also.
(Squires, Hafez, 305)
67. From ghazal 317. The phrase is from the following couplet: “I was an angel and supreme paradise was my place / Adam brought me to this flourishing monastery in ruins.” See also Davis, Faces of Love, 114.
68. From ghazal 366. Also see Davis, 86. Squires translates the couplet as follows:
we glimpsed the fresh growth on the chin of the beloved
so from the gardens of paradise
we came looking for the tender shoots
of his loving-kindness.
(Squires, Hafez, 330)
69. From ghazal 1. Reference to the following couplet: “How can I have a refuge of pleasure in the caravanserai of the beloved, since at every moment / The camel’s bell cries, ‘Pack up your belongings’?” See also Davis, Faces of Love, 10. Squires, translates the couplet as follows:
what respite do we have
here in this stopping placethis halt
what tenure of pleasure
nothing laststhe caravan moves on
nothing remains.
(Squires, 414)
70. From ghazal 152. Paraphrase of the following couplet: “My celestial soul, desiring the well of your chin / Reached with its hand the locks of your curled tresses.”
71. From ghazal 239.
72. From ghazal 393. My translation of this couplet. Bly and Lewisohn translate the couplet as follows:
What is our purpose in admiring the garden
Of this world? The answer is: Let the man inside
Your eye reach out and take roses from Your face.
(Bly and Lewisohn, The Angels Knocking, 21)
73. From ghazal 423. My translation of the couplet that contains the phrase ruined monastery is: “Cleanse yourself and then wander into the tavern / so that you would not contaminate this ruined monastery.” Squires translates the couplet as:
clean yourself up before you enter
the sacred precincts of these Magian ruins
so that they are not sullied by the likes of you.
(Squires, Hafez, 93)
See also Bly and Lewisohn, 5.
74. From ghazal 317. The phrase is from the following couplet: “I was an angel and supreme paradise was my place / Adam brought me to this flourishing monastery in ruins.” See also Davis, Faces of Love, 114.
75. From ghazal 266. The quoted adjectives are from the opening couplet of this ghazal: “My heart is unruly for a crazed, seditious one / Who breaks promises, is murderous and inconstant.” Squires translates the couplet as follows:
My heart has been stolen
by this wandering street-dancer with a painted face
who stirs things up
untrustworthyficklemurderousdangerous.
(Squires, Hafez, 152)
76. From ghazal 29. The quoted phrase comes from the following couplet: “The plains and valleys are lush and pleasant; let us not neglect / Wine, since all the world is but a mirage.”
77. From ghazal 335. The quoted line comes from the following couplet: “Like a bird, I flew out of the terrestrial cage / Hoping to be hunted by the royal falcon.”
78. Regarding Mansur, see endnote 36.
79. From ghazal 336. My translation of the couplet. Squires translates this couplet as follows:
rise up before usyou who move sweetly
so that moving and circlingwe may abandon ourselves.
(Squires, Hafez, 420)
80. This is the paraphrase of the first line of the first couplet from ghazal 336. For a translation of the entire ghazal, see Davis, Faces of Love, 120–21. Squires translates this line as follows:
When shall I be one with youso that finally I may arise
souring clear of the world’s snareslike a bird of paradise
(Squires, 420)
81. From ghazal 471. The quoted line is from the following couplet: “Debating the how and why results in headache, oh heart / Pick up the cup and take respite from your life for a moment.”
82. From ghazal 125.
83. From ghazal 143. The quoted phrase is from the following couplet: “Though God was with him in all conditions / The lover could not see Him and called Him from afar.”
84. From ghazal 300. Squires, Hafez, 200.
85. From ghazal 125. The quoted phrase is a reference to the following couplet: “The beloved is not the one with beautiful tresses and slender waist / Be the slave to the face of the one who has that certain something.”
86. Paraphrase of a line from ghazal 3. The couplet that contains the line that is paraphrased is: “The beautiful face of the beloved has no need for my imperfect love / What need would a beautiful face have for powder and paint?” See also Davis, Faces of Love, 128. Squires translates the couplet as:
what need has my perfect companion
of my imperfect love
what need has such a face of beautification.
(Squires, 401)
87. From ghazal 385. The quoted line comes from the following couplet: “Without you, I say, I do not want life / Listen, oh messenger, and take my message to her.”
88. Paraphrase of the following couplet from ghazal 4: “The wise can be ensnared with good temper and kindness / A wise bird cannot be caught with ropes and traps.” See also Davis, Faces of Love, 118. Squires’s translation of the couplet is:
courtesy and kindness
are the only ways to win over men of vision
the bird of wisdom is not trapped or snared.
(Squires, Hafez, 12)
89. From ghazal 125. The quoted phrase is contained in the following couplet: “The beloved is not the one with beautiful tresses and slender waist / Be the slave to the face of the one who has that certain something.”
90. From ghazal 66.
91. From ghazal 348. The quoted line is contained in the following couplet from this ghazal: “The source of happiness is there, where the beloved is / I will endeavor to perhaps hurl myself there.”
92. From ghazal 357. Squires, Hafez, 101.
93. From ghazal 357. Squires, 101.
94. From ghazal 81. The quoted line is from the following couplet: “Talk of love is not that which is uttered by the tongue / Oh cupbearer, give me wine and stop this debate.”
95. From ghazal 22. In his argument, Meskoob paraphrases the following two couplets from ghazal 22: “They endear me in the monastery of the Magi / Since the fire that never dies is in my heart.” Squires translates this couplet as:
it is for this that the Magi
hold me in such high esteem
that in my heart there is
an inextinguishable flame.
(Squires, Hafez, 341)
The second couplet referenced is: “I know not who is inside my wounded heart / That I am silent while he cries and roars.” Squires translates this couplet as:
I do not know
who this person is within me
I who am heartsore
for when I am quiethe is in uproar.
(Squires, 281)
96. Reference to ghazals 1 and 428. The couplet from ghazal 1 is translated by Squires as:
how can those who stand carefree on the shore
comprehend
the darkthe wavesthe terrors of the sea.
(Squires, 414)
See also Davis, Faces of Love, 10. The couplet from ghazal 428 is as follows: “Bring the ship of wine, so that we may ride happily / Away from this sea whose shores are invisible.”
97. From Hafez’s poem, “The Wild Deer.” The quoted line is found in the following couplet from this poem: “Beside a spring, by a stream / With moist eyes in a conversation with the self.”
98. From ghazal 348. See endnote 91.
99. From ghazal 158. The quoted line is Squires’s translation from the following couplet:
if the ascetic does not take the road of excess
he has some excuse
for love is a journey that requires a guide.
(Squires, Hafez, 74)
100. From ghazal 234. Squires, 100.
101. From ghazal 227. The quoted phrase is found in the following couplet: “Pure essence is needed to become worthy of grace / Not all stone and mud can turn into pearl and coral.”
102. From ghazal 371. Squires, Hafez, 352. Bly and Lewisohn translate the couplet as:
The Sultan of Pre-Eternity gave us the casket of love’s grief
As a gift; therefore we have turned our face
Toward this wrecked caravanserai that we call “the world.”
(Bly and Lewisohn, The Angels Knocking, 15)
103. From ghazal 143. The couplet paraphrased by Meskoob is: “A pearl outside the shell of time and place / Made requests to those lost along the seashore.” See also Davis, Faces of Love, 42; and Bly and Lewisohn, 27.
104. From ghazal 336. The quoted phrase is from Squires’s translation of the following couplet:
if you give me leaveI will give you my oath
that if you were to take me as your slave
I would give up lordship over the earth.
(Squires, Hafez, 420)
105. From ghazal 255. Paraphrase of the following couplets:
Lost Joseph will return to Canaan, do not lament
The hovel of sorrow will once again flower, do not lament
Oh sorrowful heart, your mood will mend, do not despair
Your distraught mind will be calm again, do not lament.
See also Davis, Faces of Love, 29.
106. From ghazal 254. Squires, Hafez, 53.
107. From Hafez’s poem, “The Wild Deer.” The quoted line is from the following couplet: “The advisor’s counsel is merely this / That the stone thrower of separation is waiting in ambush.”
108. Paraphrase of the following couplet from a poem by the fifteenth-century Persian poet, Jami: “I was from the clan of dreg drainers at the time / When there was no sign left of the vine and vine planter.”
109. Paraphrase of the following couplet from a poem entitled “Bahar-e Ghamangiz” by contemporary Iranian poet, Hushang Ebtehaj: “We will find our way out from among its blood and water / We will come out of this wave and storm.” Bukhara, vol. 80 (March–April 2011): 270.
110. From ghazal 77. Squires, Hafez, 379.
111. Paraphrase of the first couplet of ghazal 493. Squires’s translation of the couplet, is as follows:
O sovereign beautyredress my loneliness
without you my heart begins to failcome back.
(Squires, 376)
112. From ghazal 77. See Squires’s translation in the set-off quote above.
113. Shirin and Farhad are lovers, as told by the twelfth- and thirteenth-century Persian poet Nezami-Ganjavi in verse in his Khosrow and Shirin. Leyli and Majnun are legendary Arab lovers; the most famous version of their love story in verse is also by the poet Nezami-Ganjavi.
114. From ghazal 353. The quoted segment is from Squires’s translation of the following couplet:
I shall not compare
the dust of my dear one’s street
to the gardens of paradise
the shade of the Tuba tree
or the abode of the heavenly maidens.
(Squires, Hafez, 347)
115. From ghazal 461. Reference to a couplet from this ghazal, which Squires translates as follows:
What language can Hafez use
to describe your beauty
since like the divine attributes
you are beyond comprehension.
(Squires, 28)
116. From ghazal 362. The quoted line is from the following couplet: “Gone is the enemy, and so are tears / Since all existence is alive from your scent.”
117. From ghazal 332.
118. From ghazals 123 and 363. The couplet from ghazal 123 that is paraphrased in the text is translated by Bly and Lewisohn as follows:
I brought my bloody tears to my doctor.
He said: ‘These symptoms all associate with love problems. Burning
and bitter medicines are indicated.’
(Bly and Lewisohn, The Angels Knocking, 47)
Dard-e eshq, which I have translated as “ailment of love” in the text, is rendered as “love problems” in the above translation. It is also rendered as “my pain” in Squires’s translation of the following couplet from ghazal 363: “My pain comes from my beloved / and the remedy too.” Squires, Hafez, 10.
119. From ghazal 101. Davis, Faces of Love, 32.
120. From ghazal 471. The quoted phrase is from the following couplet: “By analogy, I discerned that on the path of love, reason’s prudence / Is like a dewdrop that draws a figure on an ocean.”
121. From ghazal 357. Squires, Hafez, 101.
122. From a famous qasideh (ode) by the ninth- and tenth-century Persian poet, Rudaki: “The air is wafting the scent of the Oxus stream / the mind is reviving the memory of dear friends left behind.” From Hadi Hasan, A Golden Treasury of Persian Poetry (Delhi: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, 1965), 6.
123. From ghazal 356.
124. “The seven cities of love” is a reference to the seven stages that a mystic wayfarer must go through as described in the twelfth- and thirteenth-century Persian mystic poet Attar’s allegorical poem, The Conference of the Birds, as well as Rumi’s Masnavi. For a translation, see Farid ud-Din Attar, The Conference of the Birds, trans. Afkham Darbandi and Dick Davis (London: Penguin, 1984).
125. From ghazal 348. The quoted segment has been modified by Meskoob to fit his narrative, from the following couplet: “The source of happiness lies where the beloved is / I will endeavor to perhaps hurl myself there.”
126. From the following couplet in Rumi’s Masnavi, Book One, Part 105: “The legs of men of reason are wooden / Wooden legs are most noncompliant.”
127. From ghazal 94. My translation. Squires translates the couplet as:
but love will answer your call
if like Hafez you are one of those
who knows the Koran by heart
in each of its fourteen recensions.
(Squires, Hafez, 270)
128. From ghazal 38. The quoted phrase is from the couplet that Squires translates as follows:
being with you
postponed my doom
but now with your fateful absence
I sense my time has come.
(Squires, 278)
129. From ghazal 234. Squires, 100.
130. From ghazal 303. Meskoob’s paraphrase and the quoted phrase come from the following couplets that follow one another in the ghazal:
But for the thought of your lips, nothing exists in my yearning heart
May no one be in search of an impossible dream.
The one who was killed for your love is a forlorn Hafez, but
Pass by my grave and I will forgive you my blood.
131. From ghazal 24. Bly and Lewisohn, The Angels Knocking, 43.
132. From ghazal 49. Paraphrase of the following couplet: “The riches for which there is no threat of being diminished, / I say, truly is the wealth of dervishes.” Squires translates this couplet as:
the only wealth that does not in the end decline
to put it simply
is the wealth of the dervishes’ piety.
(Squires, 338)
133. Paraphrase of a couplet in ghazal 488. The couplet is translated by Squires as:
O heart if you are granted
the suzerainty of poverty
the smallest of your provinces will extend
from the moon to the earth’s foundations.
(Squires, Hafez, 325)
134. From ghazal 49. The quoted phrase comes from the following couplet: “I am a slave to the view of the Asef of our time, who / In appearance is a nobleman and in manners, like a dervish.” Asef was the chief vizier to King Solomon. In Hafez’s poetry, Asef is generally identified as Jalaleddin Dowlatshah, who was the minister to Shah Shoja’, Hafez’s favorite ruler, who was in power during his time. Squires translates the same couplet as:
I am the slave of the Asaf of our times
for his outward nobilityhis inner grace.
(Squires, 338)
135. From ghazal 358. The couplet from which the quoted phrase comes is translated by Squires as follows:
the mark of the people of God is to be a lover
keep that to yourself
for I see no sign of it in the sheikhs of this city.
(Squires, 406)
136. The reference is to “emblem of love” in the following couplet from ghazal 400: “I thought I could conceal the emblem of love with my flashy robe / My tears, the tattletales, revealed my secret.”
137. Mansur Hallaj. See endnote 36.
138. From ghazal 461. The quoted line is from the couplet that Squires translates as follows:
What language can Hafez use
to describe your beauty
since like the divine attributes
you are beyond comprehension.
(Squires, Hafez, 28)
139. From ghazal 474. Squires, 257.
140. From ghazal 444. The quoted phrase is from Squires’s translation of the following couplet:
who ever saw such a body
created of the spirit
God forbid that we earthly creatures
should sully the hem of his coat.
(Squires, 172)
141. From ghazal 444. Squires, 172.
142. From ghazal 206. The couplets that are paraphrased by Meskoob in this paragraph are translated by Squires, as follows:
from the dawn of time until eternity’s evening
love and friendship are bound by one covenant
before that green roof and enamelled vault
were raised to the skymy eyes
were fixed on the vault of my beloved’s eyebrow
if the shadow of the loved one fell upon us lovers
what does it matter
for we wanted him and he was filled with desire
if the thread of my prayer-beads has snappedforgive me
for my hand was laid on the arm of the silver-limbed boy
and if on the Night of Power
I consumed my morning draught
do not complain
for my beloved turned up drunk
and there on the ledge of the prayer-niche
was a jug of wine
in the time of Adamin the garden of Eden
Hafez’ lines
illustrated the pages of the book of flowers.
(Squires, 253–54)
143. From ghazal 379.
144. From ghazal 88. The quoted phrase is from the following couplet: “The story of the fear of Resurrection Day, as told by the city preacher / Is an allusion he made to the time of separation.”
145. From ghazal 26. The phrase translated here as “with her torn dress, singing a love song” comes from the couplet that Squires translates as follows:
Halfway through the night you came to the side of my bed
wine in handblouse tornand your hair all over the place.
(Squires, Hafez, 23)
See also Davis, Faces of Love, 4; and Bly and Lewisohn, The Angels Knocking, 7–8.
146. Paraphrase of lines from two consecutive couplets in ghazal 42. Squires translates the couplets as:
to sleep one night with you
one transcendent night
tender yet exalted
and in the darkness to pierce that pearl.
(Squires, Hafez, 130)
See also Davis, 14.
147. From ghazal 42. The quoted phrase is from the following couplet: “Like Hafez, in spite of the pretenders / I wish to compose cleverly libertine poetry.” See also Davis, 14.
148. From ghazal 474. Squires, Hafez, 257.
149. From ghazal 177. The quoted line is from the following couplet: “Your mole is the pivotal point of my vision / The jeweler appreciates a unique gem.”
150. From ghazal 472. The quoted line is from the following couplet, as translated by Squires:
the splendor of your good fortune
captures the hearts of king and beggar alike
may the evil eye spare you
who are both lover and beloved.
(Squires, Hafez, 167)
151. Jan connotes life, life force, and soul; both the derivatives janan and jananeh connote the beloved and, in mysticism, God.
152. From ghazal 457. Squires, Hafez, 268. The word hafez here is interpreted as “memorizer of the Koran.”
153. From ghazal 354. The quoted line is from the following couplet: “If the friend should choose someone other than me, he is the judge / May it be forbidden for me to choose my soul over the beloved.”
154. Regarding jan, see endnote 151; omr means “life,” and usually “length or span of life.”
155. From ghazal 27. From the following couplet translated by Squires as:
come backso that my life may come back
even though the spent arrowdoes not return.
(Squires, Hafez, 404)
156. From ghazal 253. The quoted phrase is from the following couplet: “I live without life, do not be surprised at this / Who counts the day of separation as a part of life?” Squires translates the couplet as follows:
I exist rather than live
but why should you be surprised
for being without you cannot be counted as life.
(Squires, 122)
157. From ghazal 464. Squires translates this couplet as follows:
with youone year would go by like a day
without youone moment seems like a whole year.
(Squires, 274)
158. From ghazals 206 and 184. Squires’s translation of the couplet that contains the quoted phrase from ghazal 206, is as follows:
before that green roof and enamelled vault
were raised to the skymy eyes
were fixed on the vault of my beloved’s eyebrow.
(Squires, 253)
For a translation of the couplet from ghazal 184, also see Davis, Faces of Love, 40.
159. From ghazal 321. Davis, 2.
160. From ghazal 348.
161. From ghazal 95. The couplet paraphrased by Meskoob here is translated by Squires as follows:
if you want to embellish the world
for all eternity
ask the wind for just one moment
to lift your veil.
(Squires, Hafez, 156)
162. Paraphrase of parts of ghazal 95. For a translation of the entire ghazal, see Squires, 385–86.
163. From ghazal 470. The paraphrase and the quoted phrase refer to the following couplet: “Humans cannot be found in the terrestrial world / Another world must be built, and an Adam anew.”
164. From ghazal 33. My translation. See also Bly and Lewisohn, The Angels Knocking, 37. For a loose translation of this ghazal, see Squires, Hafez, 368.
165. Paraphrase of a line from the following couplet from ghazal 3: “If that Turk from Shiraz would appease my heart / For the sake of her Hindu beauty mark, I would give away Samarkand and Bokhara.” Squires translates the couplet as follows:
What would I givewhat would I not give
whole cities
SamarkandBokhara
for that one dark Indian mole.
(Squires, 8)
See also Davis, Faces of Love, 28.
166. From ghazal 359. The quoted phrase is from a couplet that Squires translates as follows: “if my heart is seized with terror at Alexander’s prison / I shall gather my things and go to Solomon’s kingdom.” Squires, 391.
167. Paraphrase of parts of several couplets from ghazal 359, including the following couplets translated by Squires:
Happy the day I move onfrom this desolate staging-post
in search of my loveand comfort for my soul
and
in my longing for youlike a mote dancing
I shall make my way to the edge of the shining sun.
(Squires, 391)
See also the previous endnote.
168. From ghazal 337. The quoted line is from the couplet that Squires translates as follows:
since I cannot endure
exile and estrangement here
I shall return to my own city
and be a person of importance there.
(Squires, 221)
169. From ghazal 333. Squires, 192.
170. From ghazal 375. Squires translates the couplet paraphrased by Meskoob as follows:
where can I find those graceful eyebrows
curved like the new moon
so that I may catch in the hook
of my golden polo-stick
that celestial sphere.
(Squires, 286)
171. From ghazal 334. Paraphrase of the following couplet: “If ever once again I reach the tip of your tresses / I shall lose many heads, like balls to your polo stick.”
172. From ghazal 375. See endnote 170.
173. From ghazal 52. The quoted phrase “eyes that see the world” comes from the following couplet: “To see you, one must have eyes that see the soul / How could my eyes that see the world be capable of that?”
174. From ghazal 348. The quoted segment is contained in the following couplet from this ghazal: “The source of happiness lies where the beloved is / I will endeavor to perhaps hurl myself there.”
175. Reference to Mansur Hallaj; see endnote 36.
176. From the following couplet in ghazal 143: “A pearl outside the shell of time and place / Made requests to those lost along the seashore.” Also see translations of this couplet in Bly and Lewisohn, The Angels Knocking, 27; and Davis, Faces of Love, 42.
177. From ghazal 255. The couplet that contains the quoted phrase is translated by Squires as:
if the tide of nothingness sweeps away the ground of your being
since Noah is your Masterdo not despair at this.
(Squires, Hafez, 315)
178. Leyli and Majnun are legendary Arab lovers; the most famous version of their love story in verse is by the twelfth- and thirteenth-century Persian poet, Nezami-Ganjavi.
179. From ghazal 255. The phrase “the Canaan of the lost Joseph” refers to the following couplet from this ghazal: “Lost Joseph will return to Canaan, do not lament / The hovel of sorrow will once again flower, do not lament.” See also Davis, Faces of Love, 29.
180. From ghazal 437. The quoted line is from the following couplet: “Oh you from whose alley the story of paradise is but a tale / The beauty described of heavenly maidens is but one depiction of your face.”
181. From ghazal 372. The quoted line is from the following couplet: “Preacher, refrain from giving frenzied lovers advice / With the dust of the alley of the friend, we would not even look at paradise.”
182. Paraphrase from ghazal 415. The quoted paraphrase is from the following couplet: “Anyone who says that the dust at the door of the friend is collyrium / Tell him to look straight into my eyes and say this.”
183. Paraphrase from ghazal 472. The paraphrase comes from the following couplet: “Oh morning breeze, bring the dust from the door of the friend / For Hafez to illuminate the eye of his heart.” Squires translates the same couplet as follows:
O wind bring me some dust from the door
of he whom I revere
so that I may illumine my heart with it.
(Squires, Hafez, 168)
184. From ghazal 416. Paraphrase of the following couplet, which is translated by Squires as:
O hoopoehappy birdbe my guide on the road
for my eyes are filled with tears
of longing for the dust at the door.
(Squires, 24)
185. From ghazal 392. The quoted line is from the following couplet: “Do you know what wealth is? It is to see the friend / To choose begging in his alley over being a king.”
186. From ghazal 470. Paraphrase of the following couplet: “Humans cannot be found in the terrestrial world / Another world must be built, and an Adam anew.”
From the House of Nature . . .
From ghazal 144. The chapter title comes from the couplet that Squires translates as:
but if you are not prepared
to abandon the house of nature
how can you embark on the spiritual way.
(Geoffrey Squires, trans. Hafez: Translations and Interpretations of the Ghazals [Miami: Miami University Press, 2014], 336)
1. “The Sage of Tus” is a reference to the tenth- and eleventh-century Persian poet, Ferdowsi, and the “battle chronicle of the champions” is a reference to his Shahnameh, or Book of Kings.
2. Refers to the proverbial haft khan-e Rostam, or the seven perilous feats of Rostam, the greatest champion in Book of Kings.
3. From ghazal 359. The quoted phrases are from a couplet that is translated by Squires as follows: “if my heart is seized with terror at Alexander’s prison / I shall gather my things and go to Solomon’s kingdom.” Squires, Hafez, 391.
4. From ghazal 359. Squires, 391.
5. From ghazal 333. The quoted phrase is from the couplet from this ghazal that Squires translates as follows:
I belong to the country of my loved one
not the province of strangers
O You who protect mereturn me to my friends.
(Squires, 192)
6. From ghazal 178. Squires translates the phrase gonbad-e davvar, which I have rendered as “the revolving dome,” as “this circling copula” in the following couplet from which it is taken:
I have heard nothing sweeter than the song of love
which is the only reminder
we have of our lives
beneath this circling copula of the sky.
(Squires, 344)
7. From ghazal 45. The couplet that contains the quoted phrase is translated by Squires as follows:
I see nothing
that could be regarded as stability
in this turbulent world
nothing of real value.
(Squires, 210)
See also Robert Bly and Leonard Lewisohn, trans. The Angels Knocking at the Door: Thirty Poems of Hafez (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008), 63.
8. Paraphrase of a couplet in ghazal 74. The couplet that contains the quoted phrase is translated by Squires as follows:
boyseize your chance
as we wait on the shores of the sea of oblivion
for the space between shore and sea
is nothing.
(Squires, 412)
The two couplets that contain the quoted phrases are also translated by Bly and Lewisohn, 9.
9. Modified line from ghazal 37. The couplet paraphrased by Meskoob is translated by Squires as follows:
accept what is given to you
and do not knit your brow
for the portal of free will
does not open to us.
(Squires, 323)
See also Bly and Lewisohn, 30.
10. From ghazal 41. Paraphrase from two couplets in this ghazal. The first couplet, as translated by Squires, is as follows:
if you have got hold of some wine
and someone to share it with
don’t take risks my friend
for these are dangerous times.
(Squires, 89)
The second couplet, as translated by Squires, is as follows:
are not the upturned heavens
like some bloody colander
that scatters the remains of kings
Khosrow’s head and Parviz’ crown.
(Squires, 89)
In Meskoob’s text, the phrase that has been correctly translated here as “bloody colander” by Squires is in Persian khunafshan, which is possibly a typo in Meskoob’s text, as it appears as khunasham (bloodthirsty).
11. From ghazal 41. The quoted phrase is from the following couplet: “Do not seek joy and pleasure from the vicious circle of the firmaments / For the pure wine of this vat is all dregs.” Squires translates this couplet as follows:
friends
do not expect the wheeling firmament
to bring you happiness
for the pure wine is mixed with the lees.
(Squires, 89–90)
12. From ghazal 88. Paraphrase of the following couplet: “Do not veer from the path, with the opportunity that the spheres have given you / Who told you that this old hag has given up her deceitfulness?”
13. From ghazal 37. The phrase translated here as “the bride of a thousand grooms” is from the following couplet: “Do not expect loyalty from this inconstant world / For this hag is the bride of a thousand grooms.” Squires translates the couplet as follows:
and do not expect this treacherous world
to honor its word
for it is like an old crone
who has taken a thousand men to her marriage bed.
(Squires, Hafez, 323)
See also Bly and Lewisohn, The Angels Knocking, 30.
14. From ghazal 29. Paraphrase of the following two couplets: “Oh eyes, awaken; there is no refuge / From the relentless deluge in this slumber house” and “The plains and valleys are lush and pleasant; let us not neglect / Wine, since all the world is but a mirage.”
15. Paraphrase of a couplet from ghazal 111. Squires translates the couplet as follows:
these reflectionsand the different images that we see
are nothing but the light of the wine-boy’s cheek
falling onto the wine.
(Squires, Hafez, 103)
See also Bly and Lewisohn, The Angels Knocking, 57.
16. From ghazal 207. The quoted line is from the following couplet: “Oh the injustice and plunder in this trap / Oh the passion and compassion in that gathering.”
17. From ghazal 269. Paraphrase of the following couplet: “The firmament puts the reigns of aspired goals in the hands of the ignorant / You are a man of virtue and knowledge, which is enough to warrant blame.”
18. From ghazal 7. The phrase is from the following couplet: “Ask of the mystery behind the veil from drunken libertines / These high-ranking ascetics lack this disposition.”
19. From Hafez’s poem, “Saqinameh.” From the following couplet: “The same is true of this faraway desert / In which the army of Salm and Tur was lost.” The reference to Salm and Tur is from Ferdowsi’s Book of Kings.
20. From ghazal 29. See endnote 14.
21. From ghazal 94. My translation. Squires translates this couplet as follows:
lost in the wilderness
at every turn my apprehension grows
beware the desert and its winding trails.
(Squires, Hafez, 270)
22. From ghazal 383. The quoted phrase is from the following couplet: “You would not have become enchanted by the world / Had you listened to the advice of the literati.”
23. From ghazal 317. The quoted phrase is from the couplet translated in Dick Davis, trans. Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz (New York: Penguin, 2013), 114.
24. From ghazal 259. The quoted phrase is from the following couplet: “In this illusory state, do not hold anything but a cup / In this small playground of a house, do not play any game but love.”
25. From ghazal 121. The quoted phrase is my translation of the following couplet: “While you are on earth, relish your abilities / For your time of disabilities will be long, under the earth.” See also Bly and Lewisohn, The Angels Knocking, 55.
26. From ghazal 77. Squires, Hafez, 379.
27. The quoted phrase is from ghazal 178. Squires translates the phrase as “the song of love” in the following:
I have heard nothing sweeter than the song of love
which is the only reminder
we have of our lives
beneath this circling cupola of the sky.
(Squires, 344)
28. From ghazal 477. Paraphrase of a couplet that is translated by Squires as follows:
Two engaging companions
two jugs of mellow wine
timea bookthe corner of some meadow
away from everyone.
(Squires, 63)
29. From ghazal 1. Davis, Faces of Love, 10.
30. From ghazal 391. Squires, Hafez, 157.
31. From ghazal 436. Squires, 266.
32. From ghazal 274. Paraphrase of a line from the following couplet: “Even though the affairs of the world are clenched like a bud / Like the wind in spring, be an opener of knotted buds.”
33. From ghazal 341. The quoted segment is a paraphrase of the following couplet: “Whether or not I drink wine, why bother with others / I am the keeper of my own secret and the knower of my time.”
34. From ghazal 473.
35. From ghazal 288. The phrase comes from the following couplet: “Appreciate this night of companionship and demand your right to joyfulness / For there is moonlight that brightens the heart and a pleasant tulip field.”
36. From ghazal 473.
37. From ghazal 473.
38. From ghazal 456. The quoted line is from the following couplet: “Every leaf in the meadow is a book about a different disposition / What a pity should you neglect the nature of all things.”
39. From ghazal 22.
40. From ghazal 393.
41. From ghazal 347.
42. From ghazal 177. The quoted line is from the following couplet: “Your mole is the pivotal point of my vision / The jeweler appreciates a unique gem.”
43. From ghazal 56. The quoted line is from the following couplet: “Every new flower that adorns the meadow / Is the gift of the color and scent of her companionship.”
44. From ghazal 345. The quoted line comes from the following couplet: “What can I do with the rose and the rose garden without you, oh cypress in motion / Why should I pull on the tresses of the hyacinth and what should I do with the lily’s face?”
45. From ghazal 94. The quoted phrase is a reference to the following couplet: “Your love will come to the rescue, if you, like Hafez, / Recite the Koran from memory in fourteen versions.” Squires translates the couplet as:
but love will answer your call
if like Hafez you are one of those
who knows the Koran by heart
in each of its fourteen recensions.
(Squires, Hafez, 270)
46. From ghazal 74. Squires’s translation from the following couplet:
boyseize your chance
as we wait on the shores of the sea of oblivion
for the space between shore and sea
is nothing.
(Squires, 412)
47. From ghazal 126. The quoted line comes from the following couplet in this ghazal: “Without the beauty of the beloved, the soul does not desire the world / Anyone who does not have this truly does not have that.”
48. From ghazal 334.
49. From ghazal 52.
50. From ghazal 362. The quoted phrases come from the following couplet: “Since the loveliness of the faces of the tulip and the rose is blessed by your beauty / Oh cloud of kindness, rain on me, the earthly one, as well.”
51. From ghazal 101. Paraphrase of the following couplets:
Take the goblet graciously, since it is made
From the skull of Jamshid, Bahman, and Qobad
Who knows where King Kavus has gone?
Who comprehends how the throne of Jamshid was cast to the wind?
See also Davis, Faces of Love, 32.
52. From ghazal 101. Paraphrase of the following couplet: “Yearning for the lips of Shirin, I still see / that from Farhad’s tears of blood, tulips grow.” See also Davis, Faces of Love, 32.
53. From ghazal 101. Paraphrase of the following couplet: “Does the tulip know of time’s disloyalty / That from birth to death it would not set down the cup of wine?” See also Davis, Faces of Love, 32.
54. From ghazal 367. Paraphrase of a line from the following couplet: “Tell the bud, be not sad about the entangled affairs / For you shall receive help from the breath of the morning breeze.”
55. From ghazal 465. The quoted line comes from two couplets from this ghazal. Squires translates them as follows:
One morning I went to the garden to pick a rose
when suddenly to my ear
came the sound of the nightingale
wretched like me
it was afflicted with love for a flower
and across those lawns gave voice to its plangent cry.
(Squires, Hafez, 49)
56. From ghazal 145. The phrase is a reference to the following couplet: “May the arrival of the rose and the daffodil be a safe and happy one / The violet came happy and joyful, and the jasmine brought mirth.”
57. From ghazal 176. The quoted line is from the following couplet: “When the zephyr heard from the nightingale what Hafez said / It came sprinkling amber to gaze at the scented florae.”
58. From ghazal 146. My translation. See also Davis, Faces of Love, 54.
59. From ghazal 320. Paraphrase of the following couplet, which Squires translates as:
Last night the road to sleep
was flooded by my tears
remembering the line of your down
I traced a pattern on the water.
(Squires, Hafez, 261)
60. Paraphrase of the first couplet of ghazal 253. Squires translates the couplet as follows:
O you whose bright cheeks
gladden the garden of our lives
come back
for without the rose-bloom of your face
we shall come to the end
of the spring-time of being.
(Squires, 122)
61. From ghazal 115.
62. The phrase appears in ghazals 115, 253, and 255. In addition to the quoted couplet from ghazal 115 above, the “spring of life” appears in ghazal 215 (see endnote 60) and in the following couplet from ghazal 255, which Squires translates as: “if the springtime of life comes back to the beds of flowers / the songbird will be shaded by the parasol of the rose.” Squires, Hafez, 315. See also Davis, Faces of Love, 29.
63. From ghazal 454.
64. From ghazal 486. The quoted line is from the following couplet: “The birds of the garden are rhyme critics and humorists / That the master poet can drink wine listening to old Persian love songs.” Squires translates this couplet as follows: “the birds of the garden deploy their verbal skills / so the master can drink to the sound of old ghazals.” Squires, Hafez, 62.
65. From ghazal 51. The quoted phrase comes from the following couplet: “The one who taught Hafez the fine points of the modes of composing love songs / Is my sweet-tongued beloved with incomparable words.”
66. From ghazal 277. Paraphrase of the following couplet: “The nightingale learned eloquence through the bounty of the rose, if not / All the words and songs would not have been placed on its beak.”
67. From ghazal 392. Paraphrase of the following couplet: “Sometimes, like the breeze, tell the rose hidden secrets / Sometimes, learn from the nightingales the secret of making love.”
68. From ghazal 392.
69. From ghazal 167. Paraphrase of the following couplet: “By her scent, the ailing heart of lovers, like the zephyr / Was sacrificed for the face of the daffodil and the eyes of the narcissus.”
70. From ghazal 164. Squires, Hafez, 417. For other translations of this couplet, see also Davis, Faces of Love, 126; and Bly and Lewisohn, The Angels Knocking, 19.
71. From ghazal 174. Paraphrase of the following couplet: “The tulip sensed the aroma of sweet wine in the morning air / With a wounded heart, it returned hoping for a remedy.” Squires translates the same couplet as follows:
in the morning air
the tulip scents the bouquet of wine
its heart scarredit too has come back
hoping to salve its wound.
(Squires, 179)
72. From ghazal 164. Paraphrase of the following couplet: “Having long suffered the sorrow of separation, the nightingale / Goes to the pavilion of the rose in loud lament.” Squires’s translation of the couplet is: “after the long tyranny of absence / the nightingale / will fly clamoring to the court of the rose.” Squires, 417. For other translations of this couplet, see Davis, Faces of Love, 126; and Bly and Lewisohn, The Angels Knocking, 19.
73. From ghazal 277. Paraphrase of the following couplet: “It is fitting for the heart of the ruby to bleed / From the sorrow of its value lost to pottery.”
74. From ghazal 269. The quoted line is from the following couplet: “The firmament puts the reigns of aspired goals in the hands of the ignorant / You are a man of virtue and knowledge, which is enough to warrant blame.”
75. From ghazal 346. The quoted line is from the following couplet: “The tulip is the cupbearer and the narcissus is drunk, yet I am blamed for debauchery / I have much to complain about, oh lord, but whom should I choose as a judge?”
76. From ghazal 176. Paraphrase of the following couplet: “When the spring cloud saw the world’s habit of breaking promises / It wept over the jasmine, the hyacinth, and the daffodil.”
77. From ghazal 176.
78. From ghazal 238. Paraphrase of the following couplets: “With woad, the world drew a crescent on the eyebrow of the feast / The crescent of the feast should be seen on the eyebrow of the beloved”; “Did the breeze of your down pass in the morning over the meadow / That the rose, sensing your scent, ripped open its gown, like morning”; and “Seeing the moon of your face in the night of your tresses / My night turned bright as day with your face.”
79. From ghazal 388. Paraphrase of the following consecutive couplets: “Spring and the rose became joyful and repentance-breaking / With the happiness of the rose’s face, uproot sorrow from your heart” and “The zephyr arrived, and in enthusiasm, the rosebud / Opened up and ripped its dress apart.”
80. From ghazal 388. Paraphrase of the following consecutive couplets: “Learn the path of truthfulness from water that is pure of heart / Seek truthfulness from the free-spirited cypress and the meadow”; “From the zephyr’s thievery, see the curl that has fallen on the rose’s face / And the hyacinth’s tresses on the jasmine’s face”; “The bud bride arrived from the harem with good omens / Her beauty steals one’s heart and religious faith”; and “The frenzied nightingale, crying out in song / Emerged from the house of sorrow to be united with the rose.”
81. From ghazal 389.
82. From ghazal 440. My translation. Squires translates the couplet as follows:
I confided in the windall my fond hopes
trust in God’s gracethe wind replied.
(Squires, Hafez, 294)
83. From ghazal 454.
84. From ghazal 176. The quoted phrase is a reference to the following couplet: “At dawn, my good fortune came to my bedside / And told me, arise, the beloved king has come.”
85. From ghazal 144. Paraphrase of a couplet, which Squires translates as follows:
but if you are not prepared
to abandon the house of nature
how can you embark on the spiritual way.
(Squires, Hafez, 336)
86. The quoted line is from the following couplet, which opens Ferdowsi’s Book of Kings: “In the name of the Lord of the soul and the intellect / Nothing in the mind transcends this thought.” This couplet is translated by Arthur George Warner and Edmond Warner, in The Sháhnáma of Firdausi (London: K. Paul Trench, Trubner Co., 1905–25), as follows: “In the name of the Lord of both wisdom and mind, / To nothing sublimer can thought be applied.”
87. A qasideh, some of the characteristics of which are described by the author later in following pages, is a poem consisting of more than twenty couplets, which shares some of the characteristics of an English ode. Similar to a ghazal, the entire poem has the same meter, and the second hemistich of every couplet has the same rhyme as the first couplet, both hemistiches of which are rhymed.
88. Manuchehri-Damghani, a famed eleventh-century Persian court poet of the Ziyarid and Ghaznavid dynasties.
89. Bizhan is a champion in Ferdowsi’s Book of Kings who is captured and imprisoned in a well by the enemy, Afrasiyab, and eventually rescued by Rostam.
90. Reference to Mani’s illustrated book, Arzhang or Artang, usually referred to in English as the Book of Pictures. For more detail, see, Zsuzsanna Gulácsi, Mani’s Pictures: The Didactic Images of the Manichaeans from Sasanian Mesopotamia to Uygur Central Asia and Tang-Ming China (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2015). See also Encyclopaedia Iranica, s.v. “Aržang” by J. P. Asmussen, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/arzang-mid.
91. The first day of spring.
92. From the Divan of Manuchehri, a qasideh in praise of Ali ebn Omran.
93. From ghazal 247. The quoted phrase is from the following couplet: “The world and all that is in it is but a trifle, insignificant / Do not spare the enlightened such a trifle.”
94. The couplet that follows is from Manuchehri’s qasideh 26 in praise of Sultan Mas’ud Ghaznavi.
95. From Manuchehri’s qasideh 22 in praise of Sultan Mas’ud Ghaznavi.
96. From Manuchehri’s qasideh 34 in praise of Sultan Mas’ud Ghaznavi.
97. From Manuchehri’s qasideh 77 in praise of Sultan Mas’ud Ghaznavi.
98. From ghazal 244.
99. From ghazal 42. Davis, Faces of Love, 14. Squires translates the couplet as follows:
to sweep the road in front of you
with the tips of my eyelashes
to honor you.
(Squires, Hafez, 130)
100. This may be a reference to Akhlaq al-Ashraf [Ethics of the Aristocracy], a satirical work by the fourteenth-century Persian poet Obeyd Zakani.
101. Shah Shoja’ was a Mozaffarid king and Hafez’s longest and most favored patron.
102. From ghazal 144. Squires, Hafez, 336.
103. From a poem in the prologue of Sa’di’s Golestan. The following lines from which Meskoob uses the phrase are found in some versions of Golestan:
The four opposing unruly humors
Are happy together for a few days
When one of these four becomes dominant
Sweet life leaves its frame.
104. From ghazal 274.
105. From ghazal 476. The quoted phrase is from the following couplets:
Breeze of the morning of happiness, go to the address you know
To the alley of that person, at the time that you know
You are the messenger of the sanctuary of secrets, my eyes await you
Blow as you know out of human kindness, not because I order you to.
Squires translates the couplets as follows:
O happy morning breeze
carrying the message you know
go to the appointed street
at the appointed time you know
my eyes will follow you
as you carry my secret there
out of simple human kindness
not because I tell you
hasten in the way you know.
(Squires, Hafez, 125)
106. From ghazal 130.
107. From ghazal 492. The quoted phrase is from the following couplet: “Greetings, like the fragrant scent of friendship / To that pupil of the eye of brightness.”
108. From ghazal 43. Squires translates the line from the ghazal as follows:
breeze teasing the nostrils
at every breath
pleasing not just the senses
but the very soul.
(Squires, Hafez, 40)
109. From ghazal 115. Squires translates the couplet containing the phrase as follows:
Plant the tree of friendship
so that it may bear the fruit
of your heart’s desire
uproot the sapling of enmity
for it will produce
nothing but suffering.
(Squires, 215)
110. From ghazal 145. From the following couplet: “In bringing good news, the Zephyr is Solomon’s hoopoe / Which brought good tidings of joy from the flower garden of Sheba.”
111. With different spellings, saba means both “zephyr” and “Sheba.”
112. From ghazal 476. See endnote 105.
113. From ghazal 42. Davis, 14.
114. From ghazals 234 and 93. The quoted phrase “a hundred thousand tulips” is from the following couplet from ghazal 234: “When the breeze from your tresses passes over the tomb of Hafez / From the dust of his corpse, a hundred thousand tulips bloom.” Squires translates this couplet as follows:
If ever the breeze of union with you
blows over Hafez’ grave
from the earth of his corpsetulips in profusion will grow.
(Squires, Hafez, 100)
The phrase zephyr Christ is from the following couplet from ghazal 93: “Oh zephyr Christ, may you always be happy / For the soul of the heartbroken Hafez was revived by your breath.”
115. From ghazal 95. Paraphrase taken from the following couplet: “I and the zephyr, destitute, two inept wanderers / I, intoxicated by your mesmerizing eyes and it, by the scent of your locks.” Squires translates the couplet as follows:
I and the morning breeze
are like a pair of vagabonds
Idrunk on the charms of your gaze
Iton the scent of your hair.
(Squires, 156)
116. From ghazal 237. The quoted line is from the following couplet: “I have many tales of the heart to tell the morning breeze / But because of my ill fortune, tonight, dawn will not arrive.”
117. From ghazal 249. Paraphrase of three consecutive couplets, which Squires translates as follows:
O that a breath of wind
would bring me the scented dust
from the road of my friend
would blow away the sorrows from my heart
and bring me news of the one who possesses it
relay those uplifting words
that come from the mouth of my beloved
and bring me tidings from the secret world
and so that I might perfume my senses
with the gentleness of your breeze
bring me a waft of my beloved’s breath.
(Squires, Hafez, 241)
118. From ghazal 248. Squires, 142.
119. From ghazal 354. The quoted phrase is from the following couplet: “The story of longing as recorded in this book / Is the same error-free story that Hafez taught me.”
120. From ghazal 342. The quoted phrase is a paraphrase of the following couplet: “How can I soar in the celestial air / When trapped in the shackled frame of the body?” Squires translates the couplet as follows:
how can I range like a bird
in the air of paradise
when my body is trapped in contingency
like a prisoner nailed to a board.
(Squires, Hafez, 333)
See also Davis, Faces of Love, 124.
Strive to Be Truthful . . .
From ghazal 28. The title of this chapter is taken from the following couplet: “Strive to be truthful and the sun will be born from your breath / For the false dawn’s face was blackened from falsehood.”
1. From ghazal 407. My translation. See also Dick Davis, trans. Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz (New York: Penguin, 2013), 36.
2. From ghazal 87. The phrase quoted comes from a couplet translated by Squires as follows:
The flaming torch of the sun
that rises in the eastern sky
is lit from the hidden fire inside my breast.
(Geoffrey Squires, trans. Hafez: Translations and Interpretations of the Ghazals [Miami: Miami University Press, 2014], 419)
3. The twelfth- and thirteenth-century Iranian mystic, Shams Tabrizi, was Rumi’s spiritual guide.
4. From ghazal 28.
5. The original term in Persian, which is translated as “false dawn,” is sobh-e nokhost (first morning).
6. From ghazal 436. The quoted line is from the following couplet: “The contamination of the robe means the corruption of the world / Where is a wayfarer, a man of the heart, one with a pure nature?” Squires’s translation of this couplet is as follows:
the Sufi’s stained robe
brings ruin upon the world
where shall I find a true wayfarer
by nature purea citizen of the heart.
(Squires, Hafez, 266)
7. From ghazal 65. The translation of the line is from Davis, Faces of Love, 39.
8. The quoted phrase is a saying attributed to the prophet Mohammad.
9. From ghazal 177. Paraphrase of the following couplet: “Do not serve for wages like a beggar / For the friend himself knows how to take care of servants.”
10. From a couplet in story 4, chapter 7 of Sa’di’s Golestan, as translated by Thackston. The couplet is: “When master and teacher are lenient, children play leapfrog in the marketplace.” Wheeler M. Thackston, The Gulistan (Rose Garden) of Sa’di (Bethesda, MD: Ibex Publishers, 2008), 132.
11. From ghazal 71. The quoted phrase is from the following couplet: “The ascetic who is a slave to appearances knows not of our disposition / There is no place for taking offense at what he says of us.”
12. From ghazal 436. Paraphrase of the following couplet: “The contamination of the robe means the corruption of the world / Where is a wayfarer, a man of the heart, one with a pure nature?” Squires’s translation of this couplet is as follows:
the Sufi’s stained robe
brings ruin upon the world
where shall I find a true wayfarer
by nature purea citizen of the heart.
(Squires, Hafez, 266)
13. From ghazal 199. I have here paraphrased Davis’s translation from Davis, Faces of Love, 78.
14. From ghazal 283. The quoted phrase refers to the following couplet: “Oh heart, let me give you good guidance on the path of salvation / Do not pride yourself on debauchery, and neither sell piety.” Squires translates this couplet as follows:
O heart let me direct you
on the right road to salvation
do not flaunt your licenseor your abstinence.
(Squires, Hafez, 180)
15. From ghazal 203. The quoted phrase comes from the following couplet: “My rose-colored elder, regarding the blue attired / Gave me no chance; else there were stories to be told.” Sufis dressed in blue.
16. From ghazal 94. The phrase “guiding star” comes from the following couplet: “In this dark night of mine, I have lost my way / Come into view from where you are, oh guiding star.” Squires translates the couplet as follows:
in this dark night I cannot see
where I am going
let the Pole and Star come out of hiding
and point me the way.
(Squires, Hafez, 269)
17. Sohrab, Siavosh, Esfandiar, and Rostam are among the heroes from Ferdowsi’s Book of Kings.
18. Mazdak was a reformist Zoroastrian prophet of the Sasanian era. Opposed by the orthodox Zoroastrian priests, he and his followers were massacred by King Anushirvan, Khosrow I.
19. Regarding Mansur Hallaj, see endnote 36 in the chapter “Another World.”
20. Babak Khorramdin was a ninth-century Persian revolutionary who rebelled against the Abbasids and was eventually betrayed by a friend and executed savagely on the order of the Abbasid Caliph.
21. Although Anushirvan is known throughout Iranian history as Anushirvan the Just, in recent centuries, his status as a just king has been questioned, especially considering his having massacred the Mazdakites and all his own brothers and offspring. Meskoob seems to favor this revisionist view.
22. Paraphrase of an aphorism from Sa’di’s Golestan, story 1, chapter 1. Thackston translates the line referenced as follows: “The wise have said, ‘A prudent lie is better than a seditious truth.’” Thackston, The Gulistan, 12.
23. From ghazal 28.
24. Paraphrase of a couplet from ghazal 87. The couplet that contains the phrase is from a couplet translated by Squires as follows:
The flaming torch of the sun
that rises in the eastern sky
is lit from the hidden fire inside my breast.
(Squires, Hafez, 419)
25. From ghazal 16. The quoted phrase is from the following couplet: “Now I wash my robe with the water of ruby-red wine / One cannot cast off one’s destiny from the dawn of creation.”
26. From ghazal 69. The quoted lines are from the following couplet: “So what if the Magian elder became my spiritual leader? / No head exists devoid of some mystery of God.”
27. From ghazal 256. The quoted phrase comes from the following couplet: “Since our destiny was decided without our presence / If it disagrees with you slightly, do not fault it.”
28. The quoted line is from the following couplet of Rumi’s Masnavi, section 29: “We did not exist, thus our request did not exist / Your grace would hear without our speaking.”
29. From ghazal 407. Davis, Faces of Love, 37. See also Robert Bly and Leonard Lewisohn, trans. The Angels Knocking at the Door: Thirty Poems of Hafez (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008), 36.
30. Ahriman, akin to Satan, is the force or spirit of evil, and Yazdan, akin to God, is the force of good.
31. From ghazal 111. Squires translates this couplet as follows: “if I have gone downhill from mosque to tavern / it was not me but the working out of fate.” Squires, Hafez, 103. See also Bly and Lewisohn, The Angels Knocking, 57.
32. From ghazal 256. The quoted phrase comes from the following couplet: “I resolve not to drink wine and not to sin / If fate should agree with my resolve.”
33. From ghazal 105.
34. From ghazal 71. The quoted line is from the following couplet: “What kind of magnanimity is this, oh Lord, and what kind of almighty wisdom / That there are all these hidden wounds and no chance for a sigh?”
35. From ghazal 123. The quoted phrase is a reference to the following couplet: “Even though our dreg-draining elder has neither gold nor power / With his divine generosity, he conceals errors.” See also Bly and Lewisohn, The Angels Knocking, 47.
36. From the following couplet in the prologue of Sa’di’s Golestan: “See the lord’s generosity and kindness: his servants have sinned and he is ashamed.” Thackston, The Gulistan, 2.
37. From ghazal 80. Davis, Faces of Love, 35. Squires translates the couplet as follows:
Hafezif you raise a cup on Judgment Day
you will walk straight from the tavern into heaven.
(Squires, Hafez, 289)
See also Bly and Lewisohn, The Angels Knocking, 34.
38. From ghazal 20. The couplet that contains the quoted phrase is translated by Squires as follows:
we who are freeand without pretence
who are not concerned with trying to save face
are better than these po-faced hypocrites
as those in the knowknow.
(Squires, Hafez, 69)
39. From ghazal 284. The quoted line is from the following couplet: “God’s kindness exceeds our transgressions / How would you know of this hidden secret? Be silent!”
40. From ghazal 199. The couplet that contains the quoted phrase is: “As though they do not believe in judgment day / They carry out so much fraud and deception with regard to the Judge’s affairs.” Squires translates the couplet as:
one might almost conclude
that they did not really believe in the day of judgment
the way they come before the great judge of all
with their false claimstheir bending of the rules.
(Squires, Hafez, 287)
See also Davis, Faces of Love, 78.
41. From ghazal 76. Squires translates this couplet as follows:
do what you willbut do no harm to others
there is no other sinaccording to our sharia.
(Squires, 224)
42. From ghazal 232. The quoted line is from the following couplet: “The pious and the mischievous show their goods / Who knows what will be accepted and what will catch the eye.” Squires translates the couplet as:
good and bad
each one sets out his stall
we shall see who catches the eye
whose wares are acceptable in the end.
(Squires, 207)
43. From ghazal 435. The quoted phrases are from the following couplet: “Do not tell the pretender the secrets of love and drunkenness / That he may die from the ailment of egotism.” Squires translates the couplet as:
Let those who are full of themselves
die in themselves
let them not know the ekstasis of love.
(Squires, 91)
See also Bly and Lewisohn, The Angels Knocking, 49.
44. From ghazals 221, 266, and 342. The couplet paraphrased by Meskoob from ghazal 221 is translated by Squires as:
Hafezyou cloud your own vision like a veil
remove your self
happy the person who sees to part the curtain.
(Squires, 160)
The couplet from ghazal 266 is as follows: “Between the lover and the beloved is no barrier / You, Hafez, are yourself the veil that must be removed from in between.” Squires translates this couplet as follows:
nothing can come between lover and beloved
Hafezremove the veil from yourself yourself.
(Squires, 153)
See also Davis, Faces of Love, 111. The couplet paraphrased by Meskoob from ghazal 342 is translated by Squires as follows:
The dust of my body
veils the face of my soul
blessed be the moment
I remove that veil.
(Squires, 333)
See also Davis, 124.
45. From ghazal 49. The quoted phrase is a reference to the following couplet: “The army of tyranny rules from shore to shore, but / From the dawn of eternity to the end of time is the chance for mendicants.” Squires translates the couplet as: “though the armies of oppression straddle the world / their time is now for all eternity.” Squires, 338.
46. From ghazal 37. Paraphrase of a couplet from ghazal 37, which Squires translates as:
I am slave to he
whose spiritual vocation
is untainted by any lingering attachments
under these wheeling heavens
the velvet blue of the night-sky.
(Squires, 323)
See also Bly and Lewisohn, The Angels Knocking, 29.
47. From ghazal 470. Paraphrase of the following couplet: “Humans cannot be found in the terrestrial world / Another world must be built, and an Adam anew.”
48. Paraphrase of the following couplet by the tenth-century Persian poet, Daqiqi: “One is gold, engraved with the king’s name / The other, Yemeni-tempered metal.”
49. From ghazal 66. The quoted line is from the following couplet: “Stop hurting his heart with your lamentation, Hafez / For eternal salvation means not hurting others.”
50. From ghazal 440. Squires, Hafez, 294.
51. Paraphrase from Sa’di’s Golestan, chapter three, story 22. See the translation in Thackston, The Gulistan, 85.
52. From ghazal 477. The quoted phrase is a line from the following couplet: “A couple of astute companions, and of old wine, a couple of stones, / Some time for leisure, a book, and the corner of a meadow.” Squires, translates the couplet as follows:
Two engaging companions
two jugs of mellow wine
timea bookthe corner of some meadow
away from everyone.
(Squires, Hafez, 63)
53. From Hafez’s, “The Wild Deer.” The reference is to the following couplet from this poem: “Beside a spring, by a stream / With moist eyes in a conversation with the self.”
54. Also from Hafez’s, “The Wild Deer.” The quoted phrase comes from the following couplet: “Do not renounce wine and sitting alongside flowers / But do not close your eyes to the drunken world.”
55. From ghazal 199. This is a reference to a couplet from this ghazal Squires translates as:
These preachers who make great show
in the mehrab and the pulpit
when they are in private
get up to other things.
(Squires, Hafez, 287)
See also Davis, Faces of Love, 78.
56. From ghazal 200. The line is from the following couplet: “They rob love of its honor and lovers of their chance to flourish / They find fault with the youth and scold the old.” See also Davis, 56.
57. From ghazal 41. The translation of the line is from the following couplet: “Even though wine is delightful and the wind scatters flowers / Do not drink wine to the sound of the lyre, for the ears of the morals police are sharp.” See also Davis, 60.
58. From the following couplet from the prologue of Sa’di’s Golestan, Thackston translates as: “People who claim to be seeking Him know nothing, for those who do know are never heard from again.” Thackston, The Gulistan, 3.
59. Regarding Mansur Hallaj, see endnote 36 in the chapter “Another World.”
60. From ghazal 243.
61. From ghazal 149.
62. From ghazal 311.
63. From ghazal 12. The quoted phrase comes from the following couplet: “When could this goal be achieved, oh lord / For my collected mind and her tousled tresses to be companions?”
64. The eleventh-century Persian poet, philosopher, and Isma’ili scholar. For more detailed information on Naser Khosrow, see endnote 11 in the chapter “Another World.”
65. Reference to the tenth- and eleventh-century Persian poet Onsori-Balkhi.
66. From ghazal 37. Squires, Hafez, 323. See also Bly and Lewisohn, The Angels Knocking, 29.
67. From ghazal 388. The quoted phrase comes from the following couplet: “Learn the path of truthfulness from water that is pure of heart / Seek truthfulness from the free-spirited cypress and the meadow.”
68. From ghazal 388. Paraphrase of the same couplet quoted above, in the previous endnote.
69. From ghazal 355.
70. From ghazals 5, 278, and 356. The couplet from ghazal 5 that contains the quoted phrase is as follows: “That bitter wine the Sufi called the mother of all evil / Is to us more delightful and sweet than kisses from virgins.” Squires translates the couplet from ghazal 278 that contains this phrase, rendering it “potent wine,” as follows:
I want a potent wine
that will knock a strong man out
so that for a while I may forget
the iniquity of these times.
(Squires, Hafez, 83)
The couplet from ghazal 356 that contains this phrase is as follows: “The Sufi-burning bitter wine will uproot my foundations / Place your lips upon my lips, oh cup-bearer, and take my sweet soul.”
71. From ghazal 338. The quoted phrase is from the following couplet: “I am a lover of a beautiful face and magnificent tresses / I am enchanted by drunken eyes and pure, fine wine.” See also Davis, Faces of Love, 122.
72. From ghazal 350. From the following couplet: “Resolved to repent, I thought to seek a divination by holy writ / As spring that breaks repentances arrives, what am I to do?” Squires translates the couplet as follows:
Resolving to repent first thing today
I said to myselfI shall consult the omens
but spring which shatters all good resolutions
has now arrivedso what is to be done.
(Squires, Hafez, 44)
73. From ghazal 489.
74. From ghazal 311.
75. From ghazal 3. Paraphrase of a couplet from this ghazal, which Squires translates as follows:
O you who are dearer to me
than my own soul
pay heed
for gilded youth values the counsel of elders
more than its own life.
(Squires, Hafez, 402)
See also Davis, Faces of Love, 129.
76. From ghazal 3. Squires’s translation of this couplet is as follows:
come speak of minstrels and wineand less of fate
for no wise man has ever unpicked that knot
or will.
(Squires, 401)
See also Davis, 128.
77. From ghazal 9. Squires translates this couplet as follows:
Hafezdrink your fillindulgefeel free
without as others do turning the Koran
into a snare of hypocrisy.
(Squires, 56)
78. Paraphrase of a well-known saying attributed to Loqman-e Hakim, a legendary sage whose name has also been mentioned in the Koran.
79. Regarding Naser Khosrow, see endnote 11 in the chapter “Another World.”
80. The reference is to Sa’di.
81. From ghazal 91. From the following couplet: “Wine, beautiful beloveds, and being a clever libertine are not yours, Hafez / Take them all, and I will allow you.”
82. The concepts of sargardan (wanderer, bewildered) and sargardani (bewilderment, wandering) are found in several ghazals and “The Wild Deer” (see endnote 47 in the chapter “My Rose-Colored Elder”), including the following couplet from ghazal 472: “When the head of the lover is not the dust at the door of the beloved / How could he be free of the suffering of bewilderment.” Squires translates the couplet as follows:
how can the head of he
who is not dirt at his beloved’s gate
still the turmoil of his mind.
(Squires, Hafez, 168)
83. From ghazals 232 and 288. The word I have translated as “negligence” is translated as “disdain” by Squires in the following couplet from ghazal 232:
Hafez’ disdain for this worldly pavilion
comes as no great surprise
for everyone knows that those who frequent the tavern
become oblivious to everything.
(Squires, Hafez, 208)
The word also appears in the following couplet from ghazal 288: “Life passed in negligence, Hafez, come with us to the tavern / So that your jovial drunken friends teach you something pleasant.”
84. From ghazals 312 and 327. The phrase from ghazal 312 is a reference to the following couplet: “The pledge breaker will be broken, indeed / The wise keep their promises.” Squires translates this couplet as follows: “those who break treaties will themselves be broken / for wise men hold such pledges to be inviolable.” Squires, 171. The phrase from ghazal 327 is from the following couplet: “Oh wise elder, do not fault me because of the tavern / For in setting aside the cup, I have a pledge-breaking heart.”
85. From ghazals 218 and 490. The phrase appears in ghazal 218 in the following couplet: “Suppose like a lily I throw a prayer rug over my shoulder / Like a rose, the color of wine on the robe is being a Muslim.” It also appears in a couplet from ghazal 490, which is translated by Squires as follows:
if what Hafez hasis truly Muslim
alasif after todayTomorrow comes.
(Squires, 298)
86. From ghazal 347. The concept of the “fear of being deceitful” appears in several ghazals, including this couplet from ghazal 347: “Away from me, oh preacher, and speak no further nonsense / I am no longer the one who listens to words of deception.”
87. From ghazal 347. The quoted line is from the following couplet: “There is no hope for Hafez’s deliverance from vice / Since this is his fate, what can I do?”
88. Possible paraphrase of a combination of couplets in numerous ghazals including ghazals 53 and 313. Squires translates the couplet from ghazal 53 as follows:
Hafezalthough we have no choice but err
be courteous and saythe fault was mine.
(Squires, Hafez, 99)
Squires translates the couplet from ghazal 313 as follows:
although I have been immersed a hundred ways
in the ocean of sin
since this was set down long ago
in the book of fate.
(Squires, 96)
89. From ghazal 355. The quoted phrase and paraphrase come from the following couplet: “Like a cypress, I will free-spiritedly raise my head above the people, / If it becomes possible for me to leave this world.”
90. A contemporary of Hafez, Obeyd Zakani was a poet and satirist from the city of Qazvin who also spent a part of his life in his favorite city, Shiraz.
91. Salman Savaji was a fourteenth-century Persian poet and eulogist and a contemporary of Hafez.
92. From ghazal 477, selected couplets. My translation. Squires translates these same couplets as follows:
Two engaging companions
two jugs of mellow wine
timea bookthe corner of some meadow
away from everyone
I would not give up such things
for this world and the next
even if a pack of zealots were on my heels
and
in the whirlwind of events we can no longer see
if the rose or jasmine survive
let us see what the mysterious hand depicts
in Jamshid’s visionary cup
for no one can recall such times
and
and with this sandstorm sweeping through the garden
it is a miracle
that any colors or scents remain.
(Squires, 63)
93. From ghazal 470.
94. From ghazal 455.
95. Safarnameh, translated by Wheeler M. Thackston as Book of Travels (New York: Bibliotheca Persica, 1986), is an account of Naser Khosrow’s seven-year journey in the Islamic world and his pilgrimage to Mecca. Zad al-Mosaferin [Pilgrim’s Provisions] is considered the most important source for understanding Naser Khosrow’s beliefs, in which he expounds on Isma’ili philosophy and theology. For more information on Naser Khosrow, see endnote 11 in the chapter “Another World.”
96. Anvari was a famed twelfth-century Persian poet at the court of Sultan Sanjar.
97. From ghazals 470 and 487. The phrase “seven seas” is contained in the following couplet from ghazal 470: “How could Hafez’s weeping measure up to the richness of love / Since in this sea, the seven seas are but a dewdrop.” It also appears in the following couplet from ghazal 487: “Plunge into God’s sea for a moment and do not think / That one hair of yours will get wet from the water of the seven seas.”
98. From ghazal 39. The phrase comes from the following couplet: “Shiraz, with Rokni stream and this pleasant breeze, / Do not fault it, as this is the beauty mark on the face of the seven climes.”
99. Possibly a reference to the following couplet from ghazal 428: “Go and set this trap for another bird / For Anqa nests in high places.” The mythical bird Anqa is sometimes identified as Simorgh. For more explanation of Simorgh, see endnote 69 in the chapter “From This Hidden Fire.”
100. From ghazal 23. Reference to the following couplet: “See what the apple of your chin says / A thousand Egyptian Josephs have fallen into our well.” Squires translates the couplet as follows: “listen to what your apple-dimple says / a thousand Josephs have fallen into my pit.” Squires, Hafez, 162.
101. From ghazal 41. The quoted phrase is a paraphrase of the following couplet: “Hide the wine cup in your patched sleeve / As from the mouth of the jug, the times are spilling blood.” Squires translates the same couplet as follows:
better to hide the cup
up your ragged sleeve
for nowadays blood flows freely
as from the neck of a flask.
(Squires, 89)
See also Davis, Faces of Love, 60.
102. From ghazal 374. A paraphrase of the following couplet: “They do not know of eloquent words and pleasant singing in Shiraz / Come, Hafez, let us hurl ourselves to another kingdom.” Squires translates the couplet as:
in Shiraz it seems
no one values eloquence or verse
come Hafez
take yourself and us to some other place.
(Squires, 110)
See also Davis, 23.
103. From ghazal 283. The quoted phrase is from the following couplet: “Homemade wine, afraid of the morals police / We drink to the face of the beloved with cheers of ‘to your health.’” Squires translates this couplet as:
let us toast each other openly and drink
what previously we consumed behind closed doors
for fear of the regime.
(Squires, 180)
104. From ghazal 283. The quoted phrase is from the following couplet: “To the tune of the harp, let us tell those stories / The hiding of which made the pot of the chest boil.” Squires translates the couplet as follows: “let us tell those tales that we have been bursting to tell / and to the sound of the harp.” Squires, 180.
105. From ghazal 234. The phrase is from the following couplet, which is translated by Squires as:
As the sun of wine rises in the east of the cup
the cheeks of the serving-boy
bloom like a garden of tulips.
(Squires, 100)
106. From ghazal 283. See endnote 104.
107. From ghazal 283. Reference to the following couplet: “In the alley of the tavern last night, they were carrying him on their shoulders / The prayer leader of the city, who carried his prayer rug on his shoulder.” Squires translates the couplet as follows:
last night I saw them coming from the tavern
carrying on their shoulders
the Imam who leads Friday prayers
with his prayer rug slung over his shoulders.
(Squires, Hafez, 180)
108. From ghazal 285. Both phrases in quotations are from the following consecutive couplets:
In the era of the king who forgives errors and conceals offenses
Hafez became a drinker from the jug, while the mufti drinks from the cup
The Sufi left the corner of the monastery to sit by the vat of wine
As soon as he saw that the morals police chief was carrying a large flagon on his shoulder.
109. From ghazal 283. The quoted phrase refers to the following couplet: “Oh heart, let me give you good guidance on the path to salvation / Do not pride yourself on debauchery, and neither sell piety.” Squires translates this couplet as follows:
O heart let me direct you
on the right road to salvation
do not flaunt your licenseor your abstinence.
(Squires, Hafez, 180)
110. From ghazal 283. Reference to the following couplet: “Other than praising his glory, do not chant anything in your mind / For the ear of his heart is intimate with the message of the messenger angel.” Squires translates the couplet as follows:
and may your heart’s orisons
be only to his glory
for his heart is the confidant of the angel Soroush.
(Squires, 180)
111. From ghazal 283. The quoted line is from the following couplet: “The king’s luminous decision is where light is manifested / Should you seek to be close to him, strive to be pure of intent.” Squires translates this couplet as follows:
we see signs of divine illumination
in the king’s clear-sighted judgments
if you want to be part of his inner circle
ensure that your reasons are pure.
(Squires, 180)
112. From ghazal 283. The quoted line is from the following couplet: “Kings know the secrets to the wellbeing of the kingdom / You are but a reclusive beggar, oh Hafez, do not roar.” Squires translates the couplet as follows:
kings know the secret
of what is best for their kingdom
Hafez
a beggar in the corner should not raise his voice.
(Squires, 181)
113. From ghazal 207. The quoted line is from the following couplet: “It was in my heart that I would never be without my friend / What is to be done that my efforts and my heart were wrong?” See also Davis, Faces of Love, 58.
114. From ghazal 207. The phrase “blood in its heart and feet in the mud” is from the following couplet: “Last night, remembering the rivals, I went to the tavern / I saw the vat with blood in its heart and feet in the mud.” The phrase “the claws of the hawk of fate” is from the following couplet: “Did you hear the roaring laughter of that strutting partridge, Hafez / That was neglectful of the claws of the hawk of fate.” See also Davis, 59.
115. From ghazal 207. My translation. Also see Davis, 59.
116. Regarding Khezr, see endnote 11 in the chapter “From This Hidden Fire.”
117. From ghazal 169. My translation. Also see Davis, Faces of Love, 6–7; and Squires, Hafez, 202–3. This is the only instance in which Meskoob quotes the entire poem.
118. From ghazal 169.
119. From ghazal 255. Paraphrase of the following couplet: “Oh heart, should the flood of annihilation uproot the foundations of existence / Since, in the storm, Noah is your ship’s captain, do not lament.” See also Davis, 30; and Bly and Lewisohn, The Angels Knocking, 13.
120. From ghazal 255. My translation. See also Davis, 29.
121. From ghazal 232. Squires, Hafez, 207.
122. From ghazal 49. Squires translates this couplet as: “though the armies of oppression straddle the world / their time is now for all eternity.” Squires, 338.
No One Like Hafez . . .
From ghazal 184. The title of the chapter is taken from the couplet that is translated by Squires as:
since poets first used their pens
to comb the tresses of speech
no one like Hafez has unveiled
the complexion of our minds.
(Geoffrey Squires, trans. Hafez: Translations and Interpretations of the Ghazals [Miami: Miami University Press, 2014], 356)
1. Verse 35 of the Koranic chapter, “Light.”
2. From ghazal 184. Squires, Hafez, 356. See also Dick Davis, trans. Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz (New York: Penguin, 2013), 41; and Robert Bly and Leonard Lewisohn, trans. The Angels Knocking at the Door: Thirty Poems of Hafez (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008), 40.
3. From ghazal 407. The phrase “the green field” is from the following couplet: “When I saw the green field of the firmament and the sickle of the new moon / I recalled what I planted, and that it was time to harvest.” See also Davis, 36.
4. From ghazal 320. The quoted segment is from the couplet that Squires translates as follows:
each bird of thought
that took off from the branches of words
I caught again in the fine net of your curls.
(Squires, Hafez, 261)
5. From ghazal 428. The couplet that contains the quoted phrase is translated by Squires as:
Hafezour existence is an enigma
our answersonly fables and spells.
(Squires, 102)
6. From ghazal 380. The couplet that contains the quoted phrase is translated by Squires as:
I am like a parrot placed behind a mirror
what the eternal Master tells me to sayI say.
(Squires, 292)
7. From Sa’di’s ghazal 309. Paraphrase of a line from the following couplet: “If I say that I am not distraught / The color of the face reveals the inner secret.”
8. From ghazal 290. The quoted segment is from the following couplet in this ghazal: “Nurturing the thought of having the capacity of the sea, alas / What is in the mind of this droplet that dreams the impossible?”
9. From ghazal 375. Squires translates this same couplet as follows: “drunk we shall rip the veil / from the face of the mystery.” Squires, Hafez, 286.
10. From ghazal 429.
11. The discrepancy regarding the function of the chess pieces as used by Meskoob is due to the fact that the Persian terms for most of the chess figures are different from those in English. For instance, the equivalent of the pawn in Persian is infantryman, the queen is vizier, the knight is horse, and the bishop is elephant.
12. From ghazal 470. Paraphrase of a line from the following couplet: “Humans cannot be found in the terrestrial world / Another world must be built, and an Adam anew.”
13. From ghazal 35. Paraphrase of a line from the following couplet: “Even though the intoxication of love has ruined me / The foundation of my existence is those flourishing ruins.”
14. From ghazal 128. The quoted phrase is from the following couplet: “What can the mooing of a calf echo? Do not be enamored / Who is the Samarian to win a hand from the white hand?”
15. From ghazal 128. The Arabic phrase yad-e beyza translated as “white hand” is a reference to the following verse (XXVII:12) from the Koran: “And put thy hand into the bosom of thy robe, it will come forth white but unhurt. This will be one among nine tokens unto Pharaoh and his people.”
16. Sehr-e halal, or “legitimate or permissible magic,” in Persian connotes elegant art and literature.
17. From ghazal 178. The quoted phrase is from the following couplet: “Never have I heard a more pleasant sound than the sound of the words of love / A memento left in this revolving dome.” Squires translates the couplet as follows:
I have heard nothing sweeter than the song of love
which is the only reminder
we have of our lives
beneath this circling copula of the sky.
(Squires, Hafez, 344)
18. From ghazal 324. Squires, 393.
19. From ghazal 429. The quoted phrase is from the following couplet: “Hafez, the talk of your delightfully deceptive magic has reached / As far as Egypt and China and near to Rome and Rey.”
20. From ghazal 184. The quoted phrase is a paraphrase of the following couplet, from Squires’s translation:
since poets first used their pens
to comb the tresses of speech
no one like Hafez has unveiled
the complexion of our minds.
(Squires, Hafez, 356)
Also see Davis, Faces of Love, 41.
21. From ghazal 324. Squires, 393.
22. From ghazal 342. Paraphrase of the first line of the couplet translated by Squires as follows:
The dust of my body
veils the face of my soul
blessed be the moment
I remove that veil.
(Squires, 333)
See also Davis, Faces of Love, 124.
23. From ghazal 374. The quoted phrase refers to the couplet: “Come, let us scatter flowers and pour wine into goblets / Split the vault of the heavens and make a new design.” Squires translates the couplet as follows:
Come let us scatter petalsfill the cup
shatter heaven’s vaultand then rebuild anew.
(Squires, 110)
See also Davis, 22.
24. From ghazal 456. The quoted line is from the following couplet: “Every leaf in the meadow is a book about a different disposition / What a pity should you neglect the nature of all things.”
25. From ghazal 407. The passage is a paraphrase of several couplets from this ghazal:
I said, Oh fortune, you have been asleep and the sun has risen
She said, Despite all this, do not give up your past hope.
If you go to the heavens, like Christ, pure and incorporeal
Your lamp will bestow a hundred rays upon the sun.
Do not rely on the star that robs the night, because this robber
Took away the crown of Kavus and the royal belt of Keykhosrow.
Another of the referenced couplets is as follows: “May the evil eye stay removed from your beautiful mole, as in the chess game of beauty / Even your pawn would win over the sun and the moon.” For a translation of the entire ghazal, see Davis, Faces of Love, 36–37.
26. From ghazal 407. For a translation of the entire ghazal, see Davis, 36–37.
27. From ghazal 184. The couplet in this ghazal from which the phrase “measuring cups” comes, rather literally translated, is: “Last night I saw that the angels knocked on the tavern door / They kneaded Adam’s clay and molded it into measuring cups.” Squires translates it as:
Last night I dreamed that the angels
were beating at the tavern’s gate
kneading Adam’s clay
they made measures out of it.
(Squires, Hafez, 356)
Also see Davis, 40.
28. References to ghazal 407. Paraphrase of the following couplet: “I said, Oh fortune, you have been asleep and the sun has risen / She said, Despite all this, do not give up your past hope.” See also Davis, 36.
29. From ghazal 320. Squires, Hafez, 261.
30. From ghazal 357. Squires, 101.
31. Reference to the famous couplet by Ferdowsi regarding his Book of Kings: “I set from verse the foundations of a lofty palace / That will not be harmed by rain and storm.”
32. From ghazal 319. My translation. See also Bly and Lewisohn, The Angels Knocking, 61.
33. From ghazal 175. The quoted line is from the following couplet: “Renounce the thought of disunion to have union / For when the demon departs, the angel arrives.”
34. From ghazal 175. Paraphrase of the following couplet: “Listen to me with intelligent ears and strive for pleasure / I heard this at dawn from the messenger of the invisible.”
35. From ghazal 368.
36. From ghazal 254. Both quoted phrases are from the following couplet: “Even though others are pleased and happy with merrymaking and glee / For us, sorrowful longing for the beloved is the source of happiness.” Squires translates the couplet paraphrased here as: “if others are blithe and gay in their well-being / yearning for my love is the leaven of my joy.” Squires, Hafez, 53.
37. From ghazal 249. The phrase I have translated as “mirrorlike” is from a couplet that Squires translates as follows:
how long is it since I saw that longed-for face
boy
bring me the cup that serves as a looking-glass.
(Squires, 242)
38. Paraphrase of lines from ghazal 46. Squires translates the couplet containing the phrase as:
As long as the treasure of my grief
stays buried in the ruins of my heart
so long shall I sit here in this dereliction.
(Squires, 98)
39. From ghazal 44. The quoted line is from the following couplet: “Last night, the religious jurist of the seminary was drunk and issued a religious decree / That wine is prohibited, but better than religiously endowed property.”
40. Paraphrase of the following consecutive couplets from ghazal 170:
The reclusive ascetic who went to the tavern last night
Broke his pledge and picked up a cup
The Sufi who in a gathering was breaking cups and jugs
With one sip of wine again became wise and learned.
41. From ghazal 490. Paraphrase of the following couplet: “I made a pledge to repent at the hands of the wine-selling idol / Not to drink wine again unaccompanied by a face that adorns a festive gathering.” Squires translates the same couplet as follows:
I took the hands of the adorable wine-seller
in an oath of repentance
swearing never to drink again
except in the presence of a made-up face.
(Squires, Hafez, 297)
42. Reference to the couplets from ghazal 490 (see note 41) and ghazal 388. The couplet from ghazal 388 is: “Spring and the rose became joyful and repentance-breaking / With the happiness of the rose’s face, uproot sorrow from your heart.”
43. From ghazal 477. Squires translates this same couplet as:
listenneither an ascetic such as you
nor an old lecher like me
can change the way the world works.
(Squires, 63)
44. Earlier in this chapter, Meskoob uses “mirrorlike imagination.”
45. From Hafez’s, “The Wild Deer.” As Meskoob explains, the fish in Persian mythology means the foundation of the world; hence, mahi-ye kelk in this couplet, which I have translated as “the reed pen that is the fish,” means “the reed pen that is the foundation of writing.”
46. In Islamic traditions, Lowh-e Mahfuz, or the Preserved Tablet, is believed to be God’s first creation, on which all events and the destiny of all creation is recorded.
47. From ghazal 380. The phrase rendered as “the master of eternal beginning” is translated as “eternal Master” by Squires in the following couplet from ghazal 380:
I am like a parrot placed behind a mirror
what the eternal Master tells me to sayI say.
(Squires, Hafez, 292)
48. The original Persian is ab-e khezr, which I have translated as “water of life” to make more sense.
49. From ghazal 37. The couplet from which this phrase comes is: “Why are you jealous of Hafez, oh weak versifier? / The delightfulness and beauty of words is God-given.” See also Bly and Lewisohn, The Angels Knocking, 30.
50. From ghazal 206. Squires, Hafez, 254.
51. From ghazal 199. Davis, Faces of Love, 79.
52. From ghazal 225. Modified phrase from the following couplet: “See the voyaging in space and time in the journey of poetry / This child traverses a year-long path overnight.” Squires translates the couplet as follows:
See how one poem
traverses space and time
how this child of one night
accomplishes a year’s journey.
(Squires, Hafez, 372)
53. From ghazal 34. Paraphrase of the following couplet: “The songs in your assembly now make the heavens dance / For the poems of Hafez, whose words are sweet, are the songs you sing.”
54. From ghazal 258.
55. From ghazal 160. Reference to the following couplet: “What is the need for expressing eagerness / Since the heart’s fire is evident in burning words.”
56. From ghazal 161. From the following couplet: “How can a despondent heart compose a novel poem? / I have made one point about this, and that is all.”
57. From ghazal 149. The phrase I have translated as “fresh sweet poem” is rendered as “fresh sweet verse” in the following couplet as translated by Squires:
I am astonished that the king of kings
having listened to such fresh sweet verse
does not cover Hafez in gold from head to toe.
(Squires, Hafez, 182)
58. From ghazal 240. Squires, 195.
59. From Hafez’s, “The Wild Deer.”
60. From ghazal 261. Paraphrase of the following couplet: “Come, for the nightingale that Hafez favors / Sings once again from the scent of the rosebush of union with you.”
61. From ghazal 364. Paraphrase of the following couplet: “Oh rose, you suffered the branding of the wine last night / But I am the anemone who was born branded by love.” Bly and Lewisohn translate the same couplet as follows:
Oh, dark-spotted flower, you endure pain all night,
Waiting for the wine of dawn; I am that poppy
That was born with the burning spot of suffering.
(Bly and Lewisohn, The Angels Knocking, 3)
62. From ghazals 354 and 440. The phrase “story of longing” that appears in ghazal 354 is from the following couplet: “The story of longing as recorded in this book / Is the same error-free story that Hafez taught me.” The phrase also appears in the following couplet from ghazal 440: “At dawn I was reciting to the wind the story of longing / When a voice said, ‘Be aware of God’s favor.’” Squires translates this couplet as follows:
I confided in the windall my fond hopes
trust in God’s gracethe wind replied.
(Squires, Hafez, 294)
63. From ghazal 222. The quoted phrase is from the following couplet: “Oh one who caused the lost heart, for God’s sake, help / For if a forlorn stranger is not guided, he will be gone.”
64. From ghazal 255. The phrase “the Canaan of the lost Joseph” refers to the following couplet: “Lost Joseph will return to Canaan, do not lament / The hovel of sorrow will once again flower, do not lament.” See also Davis, Faces of Love, 29.
65. From ghazal 94. The quoted line is from the following couplet: “No matter which way I went, my fear only increased / Protect me from this desert, this road without end.” Squires translates the couplet that contains this line as follows:
lost in the wilderness
at every turn my apprehension grows
beware the desert and its winding trails.
(Squires, Hafez, 270)
66. From ghazal 440. Squires’s translation is as follows: “no pen can give tongue to the mystery of love / no person express the nature of that longing.” Squires, 294.