Today, somehow, my heart returns to this poem offered us by the 14th-century Sufi poet Hafiz. When in a certain place with the ways of love and your relationship with God, it speaks to us as few other collections of human words can. It captures so poignantly the experience and longing for love and for God, love that cannot be found "where the Beautiful Bird does not drink," but only in a deeper, more trusting relationship with God.
From a deeper place than most of us are willing to travel, this longing, this excited elevation of one's spirit and hope is shared by Hafiz with such authenticity and authority that it blows the doors off our tepid cautions and protected places, and invites us to throw ourselves into the waiting and trusted arms of love and God.
A Tethered Falcon*
My heart sits on the Arm of GodLike a tethered falcon
Suddenly unhooded.
I am now blessedly crazed
Because my Master's Astounding Effulgence
Is in constant view.
My piercing eyes,
Which have searched every world
For Tenderness and Love,
Now lock on the Royal Target--
The Wild Holy One
Whose Beauty Illuminates Existence.
My soul endures a magnificent longing.
I am a tethered falcon
With great wings and sharp talons poised,
Every sinew taught, like a sacred bow,
Quivering at the edge of my self
And Eternal Freedom,
Though still held in check
By a miraculous
Divine Golden Cord.
Beloved,
I am waiting for you to free me
Into Your Mind
And Infinite Being.
I am pleading in absolute helplessness
To hear, finally, your Words of Grace:
Fly! Fly into Me!
Who can understand
Your sublime Nearness and Separation?
*Renderings in English of Hafiz' poetry by Daniel Ladinsky, I Heard God Laughing: Poems of Hope and Joy (1996, 2006).
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