You have not danced so badly, my dear,
trying to hold hands with the Beautiful One.
You have waltzed with great style,
my sweet, crushed angel,
to have ever neared God’s Heart at all.
Our Partner is notoriously difficult to follow,
and even His best musicians are not always easy
to hear.
So what if the music has stopped for a while.
So what if the price of admission to the Divine
is out of reach tonight.
So what, my dear,
if you do not have the ante to gamble for Real Love.
The mind and body are famous
for holding the heart ransom,
but Hafiz knows the Beloved’s eternal habits.
Have patience,
for He will not be able to resist your longing
for long.
You have not danced so badly, my dear,
trying to kiss the Beautiful One.
You have actually waltzed with tremendous style,
O my sweet,
Oh my sweet, crushed angel.
Hafiz rendered by Daniel Ladinsky
Part of me feels like a crushed angel and to have that part of me addressed so tenderly swells my heart. Hafiz (find out more about him here, and about Daniel Ladinsky here) uses a voice of fatherly compassion. He recognises the long hard effort of trying to dance, of trying to awaken our hearts. Our failings are automatically forgiven because the tenacity and endurance it takes to even begin to dance with the ‘Divine’ at all is deeply understood.
We are assured that we’re exactly where we should be, not that we’re somehow forsaken or unworthy of belonging to the sacred dance of ‘Life’. Our attempts to gain admission, to knock on the door of ‘God’s Heart’ or ‘Real Love’ are noble, even in their clumsiness. My crushed wings are seen as the sacred potential for the Heart’s soaring flight. Perhaps on some level I am an angel after all – with grace, dignity and the blessing of ‘Divine’ flight, even if at the moment my wings are crushed by the marred, messy realities of the all too human world.
Maybe we can rest in this paradox: I long to be somewhere else because I feel my separation, but the longing becomes the key that opens the door. Perhaps this becomes less paradoxical if we ‘think’ with the wisdom of the heart. My heart knows its full reach, it’s painful to be so confined and cut off from ourselves and others, and so we ache with longing to feel connected and to let our love flow freely.
Ps. This poem uses spiritual language to describe the journey of opening the heart. If you feel drawn to exploring this journey of heart opening through mindfulness and mystical poetry, you can join the next intake here.