Hafiz

Rumi is, rightly, celebrated as a bringer of Sufi wisdom to our collective doorsteps.  Hafiz, maybe, is less well known.  I have a delicious yellow book called The Gift, which is full of Hafiz's poems as translated by Daniel Ladinsky. Here is one called:

LET'S EAT

Why

Just show you God's menu?

Hell, we are all

Starving -

Let's

Eat!

Another:

EVERYWHERE

Running

Through the street

Screaming,

Throwing rocks through windows,

Using my own head to ring

Great bells,

Pulling out my hair,

Tearing off my clothes,

Tying everything I own

To a stick,

And setting it on

Fire.

What else can Hafiz do tonight

To celebrate the madness,

The joy,

Of seeing God

Everywhere!

Hafiz lived at around the same time as Chaucer, and his work became known in the West largely through Goethe and subsequent translations by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Daniel Ladinsky has, as far as I know, published two other volumes of Hafiz's poetry in translation, The Subject Tonight is Love and I Heard God Laughing.