Gone the one whose beauty is matchless,
And the eyes of my heart denied his kiss.
Gone but the grief left behind in my heart;
Gone the Rose but yes, the thorn remains!
رفت آنکه نبود کس بخوبی یارش
بی آنکه دلم سیر شد از دیدارش
او رفت و بماند دلم تیمارش
آری برود گل و بماند خارش
Note: Rumi fell into inconsolable grief
when his master and friend, Shams,
disappeared.
The Awakener of Eternal Spring is here;
Frozen feeling is flowing- we have no fear.
We have longed for the return of your bright light;
We cry out for that day the heart receives your sight.
Our blindness has been an awful longstanding curse;
We are sightseeing from a dark, windowless hearse.
Master, have mercy on our willful infidelity-
O Lord, release us from our serial stupidity!
That we can’t see you is hardly our special blame:
Life is all darkness unless you ignite your Name.
Meher is light and means the compassionate Sun.
By the Master’s grace, we will see him soon.
Darvish’s heart is a garden of tangled roses,
Fed by the sweet spring of the Beloved’s waters.
When the righteous assassinate, it is fair play-
But when the enemy kills, it is God’s dismay!
When vast lands are invaded for freedom’s sake,
Innocents are killed and maimed every day.
We have no god greater than our own comfort:
We don’t care what the aggrieved have to say.
There is no pretension worse than helping others,
To then crush them and maintain it was naivete.
We have no bloody idea what we are doing- and
We don’t care! All this war business is so passe!
Let us wave the flag and regale our vast stupidity:
Let us remember our very own Timothy McVeigh!
Darvish knows full well that Nations have no honor;
He cries that The People all too easily love betray.
Big Fist packs a punch with a plan to scare:
Keep the people afraid with ugly hot air!
Politicians love fear because it works
To fool the people into electing jerks.
The chauvinist loves to stand brave and tall,
By making the voice of reason look small.
The jingoist loves to stomp on your face,
When the wrong religion is an odd race.
When the war machine gets into high gear,
The corporate man markets with a sneer.
The pastor does his part quoting the Word,
Which somehow always praises the sword.
Love and truth are rumors from the past:
Darvish hears a snarling mad dog’s breakfast!
My soul complains about your fickle desires,
And it has a longing beyond all longings.
In this wine of love, my life blows with the wind,
Because in this wine I drink a gale of madness!
جانم ز هواهای تو دادی دارد
بیرون ز مرادها مرادی دارد
بر باد دهم خویش درین باده عشق
کاین باده ز سودای تو بادی دارد
Note: This quatrain is all about the
volatility of love as represented in
the instability of Vata dosha, the air
element, which in traditional medicine
is symbolically responsible for longing
and madness.
O you the moon who leads me in the dance circle,
And whose flowing waters make me whirl and whirl!
Since the running stream has set me revolving,
So many roses have laughed open their petals.
Note: The moon= the beloved’s beautiful face.
The next image is of an irrigation water wheel.
ای آنکه مرا ماه تو در چرخ کشید
از آب روان تو مرا چرخ رسید
تا جوی روانست و منش چرخ زنان
بس لاله که خندید و بسی گل که دمید
The dervish who grants spiritual wealth
Gives away a kingdom with each breath.
The dervish is not one who begs bread;
The dervish is the one who bestows life!
درویش که اسرار نهان میبخشد
هر دم ملکی برایگان میبخشد
درویش کسی نیست که به نان میطلبد
درویش کسی بود که جان میبخشد
Note: dervish means beggar.
Rumi’s master, Shams, was the
dervish without equal.
Happy St Patrick’s Day!
Praise the Celtic Fire!
Drink a bottle of Hafez!
Buy my book, Ghazals For The Friend!
God bless you, drink after drink!
منم که شهره شهرم به عشق ورزیدن
منم که دیده نایالوده ام به بد دیدن
I am the one famous all over town for making love;
I am the one whose sight remains pure in doing bad.
In wine worship, I have drowned my image in water
That I annihilate the mirror of self-regard.
We are faithful but incur blame- yet remain happy-
Because in our religion to worry is the infidel.
I asked the wine-house master, what is the path of bliss?
He raised a glass of wine and said, “sealing the lips”.
By the wit of his downy cheek, learn to love his face;
For what joy it is to wander among beauty’s vagaries!
Gazing at the world’s garden- what does the heart desire?
To pick flowers from your cheek with the eye’s fingers!
We turn the reins from this assembly over to the wine-house,
Because, by God, we believe in sincere preaching!
I am secure in the mercy of your head of curls;
Without such allure, what’s the point of my striving?
Hafez, kiss only the beloved’s and wine glass’s lips,
For it is a great sin to kiss the ascetic’s hand of denial!
When at last the Pope of three rings passes away,
What will the Trustees at last condescend to say?
O the sartorial bliss that billows and rends,
When all the wide-eyed devotees break wind!
The Pontiff has predicted his royal passing
And inspired the bhaktas with choral gassing.
The memorial will no doubt promise a grand show
Of rambling talk and talk and sobbing Jai Hoes.
Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh will intone something
On the passing of this bogus Kalchuri King.
Praise be to the god of coin for having inspired
Papal indulgences that postpone getting dead.
On the matter of the Master breaking his Silence,
The Pope has finessed the art of wretched nonsense.
We have no doubt what happens is the Master’s will,
But O God Darvish will never be a pretender’s shill!
Ghazal #84 from Ghazals for the Friend, by Bill Gannett
We long to rise from the dead by receiving your embrace;
Why wait for the trumpets to blare to be caressed by grace?
This life of the living dead is a miraculous sham:
For the dead to impersonate the living- what a scam!
We are so perfectly programmed by the software of desire,
The mind cannot admit it is nothing but a morbid liar.
It would be much more likely for a duckbill platypus
To retire to Alaska, than for the mind to be honest!
Bells toll for the land of the free and the home of the brave:
We have more walking dead than corpses fill the grave.
By God, we long for real flesh and blood inspired by spirit,
And long to love the beloved God-Man- may we not deny it!
Only longing for love has brought Darvish a gasp of life;
The Friend’s name alone inspires the mind with honest strife!
© 2010-2026 darvish khan writes All Rights Reserved -- Copyright notice by BLOGFORM
