Who makes these changes?
I shoot an arrow right.
It lands left.
I ride after a deer and find myself
chased by a hog.
I plot to get what I want
and end up in prison.
I dig pits to trap others
and fall in.
I should be suspicious
of what I want.
translated by Coleman Barks
Oh my dear, how can I speak of being apart from you?
The eyes know a hundred tears, and the soul has a hundred sighs.
I’d not have an infidel suffer the torment your beauty has caused
To the cypress which envies your body, and the moon that’s outshone by your face.
translated by Peter Avery & John Heath-Stubbs
Where a poem belongs is here, in the warmth of the chest;
Out in the world it dies of cold.
translated by Robert Bly
The spirit sees astounding beings, turtles turned to men,
Men turned to angels, when sleep erases the banal.
I think one could say the spirit goes back to its old home;
It no longer remembers where it lives, and loses its fatigue.
It carries around in life so many griefs and loads
And trembles under their weight; they are gone, it is all well.
translated by Robert Bly
You know every fruit grows more handsome in the light of the sun.
translated by Robert Bly
The mind is an ocean. . .and so many worlds
Are rolling there, mysterious, dimly seen!
And our bodies? Our body is a cup, floating
On the ocean; soon it will fill, and sink. . .
Not even one bubble will show where it went down.
The spirit is so near that you can’t see it!
But reach for it. . .Don’t be a jar
Full of water, whose rim is always dry.
Don’t be the rider who gallops all night
And never sees the horse that is beneath him.
translated by Robert Bly
Come to the orchard in Spring.
There is light and wine, and sweethearts in the pomegranate flowers.
If you do not come, these do not matter.
If you do come, these do not matter.
translated by Coleman Barks
Dance, when you’re broken open.
Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off.
Dance in the middle of the fighting.
Dance in your blood.
Dance, when you’re perfectly free.
translated by Coleman Barks with John Moyne
Let yourself be silently drawn
by the stronger pull of what you really love.
translated by Coleman Barks with John Moyne
I have asked the eye of my heart: what is the use of all this worrying?
So don’t waste your time trying to fill your cup with water
When you know that there is nothing in this well but wind.
O Hafiz, in this desert, you have fallen victim to your own illusions.
When was a pilgrim’s thirst ever quenched by a mirage?
translated by Thomas Rain Crowe
Being Present for the Moment
Website storys
Illustration, Concept Art & Comics/Manga
Singer, Songwriter and Author from Kyoto, Japan.
Singer, Songwriter and Author from Kyoto, Japan.
An online activist from Bosnia and Herzegovina, based in Sarajevo, standing on the right side of the history - for free Palestine.
A place where I post unscripted, unedited, soulless rants of a insomniac madman
Dennis Mantin is a Toronto-based writer, artist, and filmmaker.
Finding Inspiration
Off the wall, under the freeway, over the rainbow, nothin' but net.
Erm, what am I doing with my life?
Artist by choice, photographer by default, poet by accident.
At Least Trying Too
A Journey of Spiritual Significance
Life in islamic point of view
Through the view point of camera...
L'essenziale è invisibile e agli occhi e al cuore. Beccarlo è pura questione di culo
In Kate's World
Leonard Durso 