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Poem of the Week, by Hafiz

Excerpt from a small, vinyl, dark-blue diary I kept when I was in fifth grade: It’s weird but when you walk into a room of people you can feel the air. The air is a color and a texture that you can see and feel and it’s how people are feeling. But what’s really weird is you can change how they feel if you concentrate really hard.
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I believed this at ten, and I still believe it. Emotional energy is invisible, but it’s real, and with focus and intention, you can shift it. When we were in our twenties, my sister and I used to go to parties together. Sometimes those parties would feel flat and dull, not fun. My sister and I would look at each other and murmur social overdrive, social overdrive, and then throw ourselves into the scene with the goal of putting everyone at ease and making everyone feel connected and happy.

 

Before every class I teach, I silently breathe in and out and vow to meet the participants where they are, not where I am. With intuition and insight and deep intention, you can lift up another human being. Or a roomful of them, or a nation. The trick is channeling not anger and bitterness –no matter how despairing the situation–but love and kindness.  Something that Hafiz, who lived and died 700 years ago, knew well.

 

With That Moon Language, by Hafiz (translated by Daniel Ladinsky)

Admit something:

Everyone you see, you say to them,
“Love me.”

Of course you do not do this out loud;
otherwise, someone would call the cops.

Still though, think about this,
this great pull in us
to connect.
Why not become the one
who lives with a full moon in each eye
that is always saying,
with that sweet moon language,
what every other eye in this world
is dying to hear?​

For more information about the Persian poet Hafiz, please click here.

6 thoughts on “Poem of the Week, by Hafiz”

  2. Oh Elaine, how wonderful to find this note! I miss you. How serendipitous that you stumbled across the blog and the podcast. Thank you for your kind words. . . I’m sending love to you and your family. XOXO

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  3. Hi, I was going to post this poem on Facebook so I did a search and found this. I love your introduction, it’s so true that energy runs deeply through us around us and has the ability to connect us. I found your introduction just as insightful as the Hafiz poem.

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  4. Drew, how cool that you stumbled on the poem and intro here. I love the serendipity of that – and thank you for your kind kind words. A happy new year full of Hafiz and connections and energy to you!

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  5. Yes, Alison. Seems like ‘stumbling across your blog’ is the theme here. And absolutely true for me too. I was in on a zoom sunrise meditation session this morning, and the guest teacher read the poem by Hafiz (on Valentine’s Day). I loved it and started looking for various versions of it online, especially because the first one didn’t show a title, and that left me unsatisfied. I, like Drew, really resonated with your introduction about changing emotional energy. I believed and practiced that as a child but seem to have let it drift off as I got older. Thanks so much for restoring that memory and belief. Enough said for now, but I look forward to connecting again through your blog.

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  6. Miriam, I am so glad that you, too, stumbled across the blog post. I keep drawing on that childhood sense of power – we all still have it within. I’m so glad we’re connected now.

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