All the Hemispheres

Leave the familiar for a while.
Let your senses and bodies stretch out

Like a welcomed season
Onto the meadows and shores and hills.

Open up to the Roof.
Make a new water-mark on your excitement
And love.

Like a blooming night flower,
Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness
And giving
Upon our intimate assembly.

Change rooms in your mind for a day.

All the hemispheres in existence
Lie beside an equator
In your heart.

Greet Yourself
In your thousand other forms
As you mount the hidden tide and travel
Back home.

All the hemispheres in heaven
Are sitting around a fire
Chatting

While stitching themselves together
Into the Great Circle inside of
You.

From: 'The Subject Tonight is Love'...The Poetry of Hafiz
Translated by Daniel Ladinsky

The Persian poet Hafiz:... A Sufi adherent, expressed in poetry love for the divine, and the intoxicating oneness of union with it. Hafiz, along with many Sufi masters, uses wine as the symbol for love. The intoxication that results from both is why it is such a fitting comparison.

Hafiz spoke out about the hypocrisy and deceit that exists in society, and was more outspoken in pointing this out than many poets similar to him.
As the author of numerous ghazals expressing love, spirituality, and protest, he and his work continue to be important to Iranians, and many of his poems are used as proverbs or sayings.

--PeacefulRivers.Homestead.Com & Poetry Foundation

J'ca Looking Ahead: On The Brighter Side of the Darkness

Gleaner: "Optimistic About The Future"
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20140101/cleisure/cleisure1.html

Observer: J'ca Agenda For 2014
www.jamaicaobserver.com/editorial/The-Jamaica-agenda-for-2014_15716679