What is it to inspire and be inspired? When the heart awakens to an idea or an encounter that quickens the life force within one, there is little to be done but respond, engage, enjoy. Ignoring this kind of experience is futile because it changes a person - acknowledged or not. Crossing paths with an idea or person that is seated deep within a soul that becomes suddenly unearthed and alive in this dimension is so far outside the conscious expectation that it is often a shock. How can we sense what we cannot dare know? There is the impression of falling - of things being upside down when they are actually inside out. There is little to prepare a person for so much life force to be experienced all at once. That is the form it often takes though, a shock. It can be perceived as a monster or an angel; an invitation or a temptation. It depends on the person and how they are in their skin at the time it happens. It is hardly as ambiguous as it seems but that is another discussion for another poem, perhaps.
Hafiz speaks here about how when a person crosses paths with destiny there will be no running away or hiding without a complete self betrayal. Hafiz suggests that the yearning that comes with that kind of experience drives a person to create or expire from the longing to do so.
The body will again become restless
Until your soul paints all its beauty
Upon the sky.
Thank you for listening.
https://pixabay.com/music/world-kolkata-in-the-distance-16558/
Music: I listened to several arrangements of this 1939 classic song, Comes Love (there are no less than 33 recorded renditions of it!) I still wandered back to Joni Mitchell, the version I heard in the 2000's on her concept album Both Sides Now because it is so rich and full of the feeling of a warm warning. This rendering is so much like love itself by my reckoning. There really is nothing that can be done when love arrives. It doesn't matter how it shows up, it only matters that it does and we do not deny what it wants of us.
Painting: The Lute Player by Frans Hals
The original post in this series of poems by Hafiz (including an addendum regarding the authenticity of these poems) can be found here. Also, my thoughts on this series a year into these poems, HERE.
The Gift: Poems by Hafiz and translated by Daniel Ladinsky can be purchased here.
My book can be purchased HERE. E-book HERE. The Season Two blogcasts with audio excerpts from my book begin HERE: in Behind The Lines. This reading of the book excerpts in a mixed media format is Season Two of this blog. These recorded excerpts are outside the chronological order in which the book was written. Podcasts with audio only beginning with episode 22 can be found HERE.
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