There is no season like fall to trigger the sense of a retraction and loss as the tide of summer recedes. All of the growth suspends and even the air takes on a chill suggesting distance. Evergreens, too, blink in the face of this shift in energy and there is a recall of things dark like a familiar feeling of closeness followed by the remembering of why this now feels so transient.
Hafiz is grieving here. He laments the growing beyond what serves and how it also encompasses the past efforts and desires with all of its feelings of accomplishment and faded glory. All he wants here is a familiar kiss from his master's brow as he is reminded of those busy and fortuitous times laced with activities and how it is the affection and intimacy that fills the heart and remains long after the initial seeds have been sown and ways are parted.
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Thank you for listening.
https://pixabay.com/music/mystery-islamic-way-109185/
Music/Video: This song and video is from promotion of the movie Three Thousand Years of Longing which speaks to the very human lament of yearning that all humans experience in one form or another. Here the song is called Cautionary Tale and it is sung by Matteo Bocelli. The music captures the feeling and the visuals certainly capture the exchange in stepping into all of desire and its costs. It is a price that most of us would willingly pay over never having had such an experience. Loving is a cautionary tale, indeed, but it is the only story of the heart worth telling even with knowing how it ends.
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.