Hafiz | rebekahjmarshall

I am reading Hafiz’s Little Book of Life, poetry by Hafiz-e Shirazi. He is challenging me to become more comfortable with ambiguity. I will share his poem and some of my thoughts on his poem (sometimes with the help of experts when the concepts are too hard for me), followed by a poem and some art inspired by his poem.

Hafiz’s Poem 1:

Between these two doors
This caravan

Some thoughts:

The imagery of doors implies entrances and exits, passageways, or boundaries. Two doors suggest pillars of demarcation in time, place, awareness or perhaps binary contrasts. Opposite ends of conceptual delineations like birth and death or past and future seem like reasonable possibilities.

But those don’t seem to be what Hafiz is concerned with. He is pointing out the between. What is happening in the interim, the dash? Of course, the interesting part is the journey. We get so hyper-focused on reaching the destination that we become uncomfortable with the time spent in the now learning to be patient.

I picture a caravan of camels carrying the worldly goods of travelers long distances, the people eager for trade, companionship, good food, fresh water, music, romance, and laughter. It is life in motion. The doors are really of no consequence right now. They are the least of our concern when we have all this living to do.

My Poem 1:

Unmoored, afloat, uncertain if hope
is a delusion or a virtue
stillness sits where ambition
once cracked her knuckles

the in-between is where?
beginning was once easy to define
though ending is unknown
the certainty of it was assumed

now nothing reveals itself as absolute
except this protest march
that might possibly transform
into a celebratory parade

Hafiz. Hafiz’s Little Book of Life. Translated by Erfan Mojib and Gary Gach, Hampton Roads Publishing, 2023.