A Tale of Love

In the garden at dawn I sought for a rose
when nightingale's voice broke the peace with her prose.

Like me, she was mad for love of a flower
and woke up the garden by trilling her woes.

I strolled round the garden moment by moment,
eyeing songbird's affair with flower she chose.

Sweet flower did swoon while the nightingale wooed;
this one's yet to age, that one's caught in love's throes.

As nightingale's song penetrated my heart,
it erased all desires my mind could compose.

In garden where so many roses abound,
to pick even one is to learn where thorn grows.

Haféz, seek no comfort from life's wheel turning,
for its one thousand squeaks create no repose.

Step 12

The Rage of Love

Declaring that Persian poetry is about love is rather like saying that wineglasses are used for wine. In both cases, the vessel draws its existence from the essence that flows within. In terms of rendi, love is a volatile presence, a voluptuous purpose, and an inevitable longing for reunion with the beloved. Both divine and human love fuel the condition of one-heartedness, and both reflect the most profound feelings of intoxication.

As the rend balances spirituality and mentality to cultivate compassion and generosity, mental expansion takes up its protective stance against the threatened incursion of narrow-mindedness. In turn, another process must also arise to assure that the inner war generated by broad-mindedness does not spill over into outer life as a harshly expressed resistance against the world's offerings of experience and emotion. Our desire for love is this insurance against the rend's shutting down the world of feelings.

In "A Tale of Love," Haféz reports on watching a nightingale and rose act out his own desire for the heart of the beloved. As usual in his verses, the love may be seen as either worldly or ethereal:

In the garden at dawn I sought for a rose
when nightingale's voice broke the peace with her prose.

But this desire called love is far from peaceful for the one who does the loving:

Like me, she was mad for love of a flower
and woke up the garden by trilling her woes.

Watching bird and flower, the poet realizes that the exchange between lovers involves a number of different feelings and patterns of behavior. Love is not a simple, easily understood feeling:

Sweet flower did swoon while the nightingale wooed;
this one's yet to age, that one's caught in love's throes.

Finally, the painful side of love becomes as evident as the desirable side. In the end, we get the message that there's no comfort in love. But remember, too, as Haféz stresses, rendi is not about comfort:

In garden where so many roses abound,
to pick even one is to learn where thorn grows.

Haféz, seek no comfort from life's wheel turning,
for its one thousand squeaks create no repose.

In order to be a truly desirable pathway, rendi must embrace the full range of feelings that we can experience. Within that range, the desperation stemming from separation from the beloved emerges as the most powerful entity for Haféz and the other poets in his lineage. For five hundred years, Rudaki and Khayyam and Rumi had been calling from their depths for divine spiritual reunion. Then came Saadi in Shiraz, just before Haféz. In Saadi's writing, the ghazal turned into a love song to be sung on Earth about the beings of the Earth. Informed by these two approaches, Haféz opened his mental arms and wrote of both spiritual and worldly aspects of love.

Love as the craving for this unity is the attribute of rendi that inspires the expansion of our beings. In today's terminology, such love stretches our envelopes. As Haféz writes:

For lovers alone this Earth spins up to speed;
to feel no love is to lack the true rend's seed.

The true rend, remember, is Haféz himself, the unorthodox spiritual seeker. Love, divine or otherwise or all-inclusive, is the motivating force at any given moment. In the verse just quoted, the true rend is distinguished from the profane debauchee who stumbles through life without purpose. That lack of purpose is the lack of love.

The goal of rendi can be defined as the state of inner unity, the condition of completion, the gathered memory. That quality can also be called, quite simply, love. For Haféz, achieving this unity gives meaning to all the rest of existence, and this is an accomplishment worth any risk, any cost. Here is how he explains it:

Certain things fulfill us, seduce us to stay;
a thought of hand's touch on her face becomes sweet.

A blossom needs the beloved's reflection;
cypress and flower with a song are replete.

This body is a particle--there's no fun
or fulfillment until surrender's complete.

In this final verse, we find perhaps the greatest secret of all: Love is surrender. The surrender of ourselves, our bodies, everything. Only then does the possibility of true completion arise as the essence of love. And, the poet says, this is our natural state, so why fight it?

Since eternity, love's been my destiny;
this inscribed fate cannot be erased from me.