The Comatose Daffodil    

Ghazal 395  

Discussion   Join   



Masking the rose petal by the musked sable tresses
                                                      As Your doing
Meaning: Veiled is Your Face and a universe left in ruins
                                                      As Your doing [1]

Sprinkling the dew off Your Face around the meadows
Filled with rosewater, our eyes the crystal perfume bottle
                                                      As Your doing [2]

The season of blossoms, like the passage of lives, hurried
O cupbearer! Serve around with haste that verdant wine
                                                      As Your doing [3]

Open with trickstery the drunken drowsy daffodil
The envious daffodil’s eye closed into a coma
                                                      As Your doing [4]

Listen to the violet’s fragrance and clasp at the tresses of vision
Glance upon the color of tulips whilst willed to gulp down the wine
                                                      As your doing  [5]

Since slaughtering the lovers is your habit and tradition
Pass the goblet to our enemies and be harsh with us
                                                      As your doing [6]

Let your pupils dilate like the bubbles in goblet
Thus treat the foundation of this hearth like bubbles
                                                      As your doing

Hafez begs for Wisāl midst the invocations
O Lord! Do accept the tired hearts’ prayers
                                                       As Your doing [7]

End.


There is no sober cell in her body, the collective of her, from the pulse of a thought to the whim of a want, drunken by the wine of anticipation, Shawq (Yearning) to behold the Face of her Beloved.

Give her no askance look! That the comprehension may be: A lowly African woman in coma, yet the reality held in abeyance of the present: Our simulated soberness the true coma caused by the intoxication of living this life and if you believe me not, then do glance upon the mirror of her skin.

Call her not a woman that forsooth she is a Faqir (Pauper), incubated in needlessness, not only she is in need of no one but also in the verbiage of her Being-ness there is no word ‘need’, erased by the past and future.

Within the perimeters of Divine Beauty she roams as a Non-Being saved as an image in our eyes: Evanesced. And we the reflections of an obese drunk intoxicated by loving our own Self, stuffed with the gluttony for past & future. 



[1] Sufi code words: ‘flower petal’ is a metaphor for the face of a loved one. ‘Tresses’ means the veil that hides the face of a beloved. The term ‘musk’ could mean that the said veil is a refined beautiful object i.e. the splendor of the life of this world.

[2] ‘Droplets falling of the face’ refers to the Divine Attributes that are given as gifts to this world e.g. mercy, beneficence and so on. And we, the human creation, are likened to perfume bottles containing the precious Divine Attributes bestowed upon the humanity.

[3] Perhaps cupbearer here is referring to the need for acquiring love while the life of this world rushing away.

[4] Daffodil in Sufi poems refers to the eye’s pupil or in specific the beloved’s eye. Here in the first verse the sleep spiritual eye is opened, as in awakening and in the second verse the eye of greed is closed into a coma. And this possible only by That Beloved’s doing.
 
[5] Tulip is the end result of the Ma’refat (Divine Gnosis) i.e. Mushāhedah (Divine Perception) or metaphor for glancing upon the beloved’s face. (Sajjadi’s Sufim Terminologies). Wine refers to Mahab-bat (Divine Love).

[6] Here ‘you’ refers to the life of this world, our destinies, who destroys the lovers and Hafez says: Hey! Then do send the goblet to our enemies feed them clothe them and so on but let us suffer for love & loving.

[7] Wisāl means to connect to join referring to reaching or joining with That Divine Beloved. However there is no way and there is nothing that can reach or come close to Hu (IT), in Sufism this term is defined by negation: To disconnect and forsake the attributes of the life of this world is to Wisāl (Join) That Divine Beloved.


© 2005-2002,  Dara O. Shayda