#persian poetry

[marfa-g]

sketches with persian lovers based on one of my favorite poems

[cherrychevellet]

دست از طلب ندارم تا کام من برآید یا تن رسد به جانان یا جان ز تن درآید

I will not cease my pursuit until my wish is fulfilled, Either my body reaches my beloved, or my soul leaves the body.

Saadi Shirazi

[maihonhassan]

"Yak zamana, sohabat-e-ba-Auliah; Behtar az, sad sala ta'at-e-be-riya."

"a moment spent in the company of a Sufi; is better than a hundred years of sincere worship."

~ Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī

[sadiahakim]

Love carries the heavens and gates the hells.

— Sadia Hakim // from Mehrsprachig (Arabic poems by sadia hakim)

[iqrajafzal]

Come back, For my eyes await you,

The way ears of those who are fasting, Await the azaan of Maghrib.

[anniflamma]

So I started to keep count how many times Rumi mentions Shams by name. I can just say... To many... The man can't stop thinking about him.

[pomegranateandcoffee]

Forough Farrokhzad poetry for today

[whereshadowslive]

The minute I heard my first love story, I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along.

— Jalal al-Din Rumi

[nabihahahahahaha]

گفتم که مرگ عاشقان ،

گفتا کہ درد ہجر من

گفتم کہ علاج زندگی

گفتا کہ دیدار منست

Guftam ke marg aashiqan,gufta ke dard hijr mann.

Guftam ke ilaj zindagi, gufta ke deedar mansat.

I asked what is the cruel death,

replied the pain of living without me

I asked what is a healthy life,

replied gazing at me.

[thegentleintellectual]

i could not find anyone in this lone world who is like you let me see your moon-faced effigy, so i will not stay in desire

-Shah Ismail Hatayi

[marfa-g]

[loneberry]

"Attar is one of the greatest poets of the Persian language. Nonetheless, his popularity - both in Iran itself and in the West (Goethe, for example, touched on him only briefly in his West-Eastern Divan) - does not match that of Ferdowsi (d. 1020), Omar Khayyam (d. c.1132), Rumi, Saadi (d. 1292) or Hafiz (d. 1389); occasionally he is even omitted from the line of seven Persian poet-princes in favour of Jami (d. 1492). One pos­sible reason for this is that the composition of his poetry is too artful, too complex to be effective in the town squares and teahouses, while at the same time, many of his stories and figures may seem too coarse, too folk-like and too sarcastic to be at the forefront of the high spir­itual literature cultivated at courts in former times and in middle-class households today. Attar’s poetry, on the other hand, is far less stilted than that of most Persian poets but, rather, unadorned, clear and imme­diate. The pain it expresses is not spiritually filtered as in Rumi, far less metaphysically elevated than in Saadi, and not sublimated into pleasure as in Omar Khayyam - where Hafiz turns the earthly into the mystical, Attar strips mysticism down to its leaden, earthly foundation in order to scream his longing to the heavens." --Navid Kermani, The Terror of God: Attar, Job and the Metaphysical Revolt

.

I asked my professor which masnavi (Persian epic poem) he thinks is the greatest ever written. He replied, Rumi's Masnavi (the only masnavi Rumi wrote). Shock. How can there be a masnavi greater than Attar's Conference of the Birds? (There are 4 authentic Attar masnavis; sadly, as far as I know, Conference of the Birds is the only one that has been translated into English.) Reading through Rumi's masnavi I think I am still team Attar. It's Attar's coarseness I love--he is a poet of mad saints and freaks. In Rumi's Masnavi, the absence of a frame story and the pious/didactic tone is somewhat of a barrier for me. The pieces don't quite hang together, whereas Attar's Conference of the Birds is intricately structured--there are stories within stories within stories, each bird with its idiosyncratic psychology--a narrative arc that mirrors the journey of the soul across the seven valleys. But maybe there is a difference between reading a sufi text for its poetry rather than religious instruction, I don't know.

[yourcozylibrary]

“Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. It doesn't matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. Come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times. Come, yet again, come, come.”

—Rumi's Masnavi (persian poet)

[aashufta-sar]

دے رہے ہیں لوگ میرے دل پہ دستک بار بار، دل مگر یہ کہہ رہا ہے صرف تو اور صرف تو

De rahe hain log mere dil pe dastak bar bar, dil magar yeh keh raha hai sirf Tu aur sirf Tu

— Fariha Naqvi فریحہ نقوی

[dreamy-conceit]

Seek the wisdom that will untie your knot. Seek the path that demands your whole being.

— Rumi (Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī), translated by Maryam Mafi in 'Hidden Music'

[anniflamma]

Saw it. Brought it home. Time to read more 1300s persian poems.