Author Archives: mshiva

Holy Night – Mazun – D. Wilde’s English Poetic Rendition

Holy Night (D-S8)

I’d just as soon tonight
would never end –
The friend has lit
the house like candlelight –

Her face is gracing
everything –
no sun or moon
rise need recur –

Her eyebrow curving
like black letters
in a holy book –

Her breast seen edge-on
in the candlelight,
the scent of it –

The musky fragrance
of her hair
has filled the room
like incense –

And her braid is looped
around my neck,
its scent alone
has done me in –

Her face leans
close enough for me
to see the slight sweet down
of her upper lip –

It tastes of rose
and sugar, sweeter
than I need
or can bear –

Like thirst slaked
after desert heat,
my hand finds
the smoothness
of her skin –

The smoothness
of her breast –

The scent of musk
impenetrates
and permeates
my fingers –

She shifts and smiles,
I pull her nearer,
can’t let go –

And when she speaks
her eyebrow arches,
clever, sweet
and voiceless word.
(OR for last stanza:
And when she speaks
her eyebrow arches,
clever, sweet
and voiceless
pre-eternal word.)

She falls asleep
in silence in my arms,
in deepest night
when darkness feels
eternal. All endures
persistently through death.

Let every heart –
prays Mazun – have
the friend
in every moment.

Mazun and His Poetry

Image by Kambiz Najafi

Mazun – An Introduction

The translations here are co-translations.
The first draft of this introduction, and the translations of 12 qazals (“love songs”), were written for the 1999 NEH Summer Seminar on Islamic Mystic Literature. First the qazals were translated from Qashqai Turki to Persian with the help of a kind Tabriz-born colleague and interlocutor in Seattle, who preferred to be anonymous. I did a rough translation of these poems from Persian to English, and then different translated poems were edited by various participants of the seminar in Chapel Hill. Kambiz Najafi, a Qashqai poet and literary critic in Firuzabad, later found an error in one of the translations and it was then corrected.

I would like to thank all those who participated in this co-translation process.

Twelve Qazals (Love Songs) by Mazun and Their (Literal) Translation in English

1) I Don’t Know What I Am

2) What Is, Is in Love

3) Existed

4) A Blessed Night

5) My Pain

6) Love’s Religion

7) Insanity’s Home

8) Each Person Has a Different Path to the Friend’s Neighborhood

9) Who Is Here? How Is There?

10) Beloved’s Manifestation

11) Why?

12) Do You Remember?

Image by Kambiz Najafi

English Poetic Renditions of Nine of the Above Qazals By Mazun
“The literary versions of the poems given here represent an effort to convey the general sense of the originals, and are not direct word by word translations. They are worked after the fashion of John Moyne and Coleman Barks, who made “versions” of Rumi. These are “versions,” or renditions, of Mazun’s poems; they frequently depart from the original Turkish phrasing, and in places imagery is reworked, expanded or contracted in order to bring as clear a sense of the poem’s feeling as possible, as opposed to its particular words or phrasing, which are in fact translatable from Turkish to English only in very clumsy ways. These versions of Mazun’s poems seek to convey graces from the originals in contemporary English phrasing and poetic conventions. These renditions of nine poems are based on the literal English translations of Mazun’s qazals.

D. Wilde – Fellow, 1999 NEH Seminar on the Literature of Islamic Mysticism, U. of North Carolina.”

No Idea – Mazun – D. Wilde’s Poetic Rendition

What Is, Is in Love – Mazun – D. Wilde’s Poetic Rendition

Holy Night – Mazun – D. Wilde’s Poetic Rendition

Love’s Religion – Mazun – D. Wilde’s Poetic Rendition

The Place of Insanity – Mazun – D. Wilde’s Poetic Rendition

Pathways – Mazun – D. Wilde’s Poetic Rendition

Manifestations of Love – Mazun – D. Wilde’s Poetic Rendition

Why – Mazun – D. Wild’s Poetic Rendition

Do You Remember – Mazun – D. Wilde’s Poetic Rendition

What Is, Is in Love – Mazun – D. Wilde’s Poetic English Rendition

What Is, Is in Love (D-S6)

Like a moth circling a burning candle,
I love my friend’s face.
Give me your hand,
and nothing else.

If my body were dissected
joint by joint, my love
of my friend would leak
from elbow, wrist and knee,
and nothing else.

Before the clocks of creation
began to tick, God asked everyone:
“Am I not your lord?”
and like a choral symphony
we all replied in unison, “You are!”
and nothing else.

When the drums of that reply
are faintly heard, an echo,
then the friend is tested
by his enemy – he hears
and speaks of love
and nothing else.

By darkness, light. By light,
darkness. One drills down
for gems; and one looks up.
The kings and sultans, presidents
and ministers through all eternity
have long since turned to dirt.
But spirits descended
from every lover who ever lived
still walk the earth.
What is, is in love,
and nothing else.

Holy reverence to my father,
who told my teacher: “Give him
your hand and guide him
through love’s lessons,
nothing else.”

Like the windswept barren desert,
Majnun’s tears.
Nothing else.

If Mazun dies dirt-poor, no worry –
on his tomb write:
In this place lives love,
and nothing else.

No Idea – Mazun – D. Wilde’s Poetic Rendition

No Idea (D-S5)

Whatever peace I had,
my friend has long since
boiled away.
I’m blind drunk
and reeling like a man
who stared too long at the sun.

I can’t tell the cup
from the wine from
the saaghi – they’re all
the same to me,
I’m so in love.

What I am
I have no idea,
or what I was before
I was,
what anybody was –
what we were before
we were
escapes me too.
I don’t know, even,
if I want to sober up.

I was carried, pushed and pulled here
on a web of roads I can’t remember
now, and never knew the reason.

I haven’t come to cause confusion –
this isn’t nonsense – I’m trying
to distinguish details.

I’ll keep calling Hu from here until I die.
“What is ‘life’?” I say, and
“What is ‘honor’? What’s ‘disgrace’?”

I’ll tend this garden ’til I die
and revel in the work.
That’s why I’m here.
Not to close the festival down.
If love’s a scandal,
what is it then, that holds
us all together, top to bottom?

I haven’t come to make this world my home –
I’m on my way to where I came from,
nowhere. Drunk I came and drunk I got,
and drunk I’ll go,
so soused
I can’t tell sweet from cyanide.

I haven’t come to sniff out every aster,
rose and meadow blossom one by one,
but be a nightingale to one enormous flower –
goldenrod, a form of sunlight,
maybe Queen Anne’s lace, a moonlight –
all one flower.

The gardener roars in vain
at the loss of a single blossom.
The nightingale, completely free,
illuminates the summer-yellow
field of flower
whole
with music.

I haven’t come to brood and sob.
I play my tar and sing.
Music’s my
intelligence, too bright to bear
the weight of sorrow.

“What is ‘sadness’?” Ma’zun asks.
“And what is ‘grief’?”

Do You Remember?

Do You Remember?

Handsome, your beauty surpasses other beauties.
Write, let me know how you are doing, peri.

Everybody did, what happens if I do?
Describing your charm in this gathering, peri?

Your breasts are like marble. Your alef-like stature resembles spruce.
Around your flower-like face, curl to curl, is ambergris scented hair.

You’d sleep and I’d stay all night till dawn,
Guarding your assets and riches, peri.

The day I fell in love with your moon-like charm.
I found that my incurable pain had no remedy.

Do you remember, I was saying: Dawn, Dawn?
Praying no ruin falls on you, peri?

You threw me in the corner of a cage, waiting to see
when paradise wind would blow from your hair.

From beginning to end you gave to everybody,
to paupers your assets and riches, peri.

Pauper Mazun cannot tolerate. He rips
his collar with his hand, making his eyes tearful.

Endures because of you, wipes with your skirt,
in view of your eyelashes, his tearful eyes, peri.

(S110)

Why?

Why?

Oh God, one cannot argue with you, but,
why did you throw us in the fire of love?

You formed us with your power, and water and clay.
Why did you create the moon-like beauties?

You made eyebrows into pens, and locks of hair into lassos.
You made sugar-water limpid from sweet lips.

If you wanted me not to become afflicted and degraded,
why did you create lovesick girls?

If you wanted submission and prayers,
you would not have given beauties coquetry and coyness.

If false love is a sin,
why did you make drunkard eyes drunk?

The moth would not burn if there is no candle.
The nightingale would not go mad if there is no flower.

If Layla did not rupture faith,
why should Majnun wander around the mountain and the desert?

I’m talking about your attributes and your essence.
I’m afraid, I cannot return from my inner heart.

From love’s fire, why did you put
troubled words on Mazun’s tongue?

(S99)

Beloved’s Manifestation

Beloved’s Manifestation

One who is eager for love,
the beloved’s manifestation is in his soul.

In his existence there is the sign,
in his bones, marrow, and blood.

Is the beloved a houri or a human?
Venus, the sun, or the moon?

My beloved, in short,
is neither from the earth, nor from the sky.

Day by day my beloved’s beauty becomes more elegant.
Moment by moment I become more saddened.

My beloved is closer to me than myself,
Yet, I don’t know where my beloved is.

One who has reason and knowledge,
becomes intimate with someone of his kind.

I, helpless and Majnun-like,
have become accustomed to the desert.

One lover is roaring.
He is eager to see a shining face.

Another is distressed,
keen to see her lustrous hair.

Another desires his lover’s breasts.
Describes them as ripe pomegranates,
Hails them improperly,
Praises apples of Isfahan.

One lover says: “My beloved is going away.
My liver’s blood became my wine.
From my cry the world became deaf.
Is this friend in the grinding mill?”

Mine is above all others’ loves.
He is dear, a husband to widows.

He knows everything,
whether the meaning or the expression.

The light of his candle doesn’t vanish.
He is the beloved, I’m the lover.

He is the ocean, Mazun the fish,
How wonderful, what an endless sea he is.

(S60-61)

Who Is Here? Who Is There?

Who Is Here? Who Is There?

In the Garden, when the autumn wind blows,
In the bird’s voice there is wailing and lamentation.

In the lovesick nightingale’s song there is a call,
with a different effect, a different mark.

Still, the nightingale is yearning for the love of the flower.
Still, the salamander is nesting in the oven.

Still, Mansur is hanging on the gallows.
He says: “I’m the Truth,” yet the secret is hidden.

Still, Zulaykha is not afraid of rebuke.
Still, Yusuf is evading Zulaykha.

Still, the Christian maiden is breaching Sheikh San’an’s faith.
Still, the Sheikh is tending her swine.

Still, Majnun desires to become insane.
Still, Layla’s camel flees the caravan.

Still, the noise of Farhad’s pickaxe can be heard.
Still, Shirin’s tale is sweet to tell.

Who is calling and who is telling in the music of the saz?
Everything becomes musical. Who spends life from moment to moment?

Mazun says: “Who is here? Who is on there?”
He is here; he is there. Where is he?

(S35)

Each Person Has A Different Path To The Friend’s Neighborhood

Each Person Has A Different Path To The Friend’s Neighborhood

We exchanged reason for love.
Everybody is a buyer of a different good.

The mystic’s design and mark is distinct,
A different bazaar, a different shop.

It’s a different journey, a distinct world.
It’s different from this world and the other world.

Those on the land are unaware of those in the air.
A good from Ethiopia is different from one from Central Asia.

One who is in the sea is ignorant of some one who is in the desert.
Everybody is the king of his own city.

One has become Moses and has seen the Beloved on Mount Sinai.
One, like Jesus, has seen the Beloved while crucified.

One has seen in the dark, another in the light.
Each person has a different path to the Friend’s neighborhood.

One becomes like soil, and kisses the threshold.
Another becomes fervent, then flutters.

One, like Mazun, makes his chest a shield,
seeking the arrow of love.

(S34)

Insanity’s Home

Insanity’s Home

I’m building the house of insanity.
I’m the builder. I’m the architect.

I drink the wine of mysticism.
I’m the wine. I’m the wine drinker.

I’m effaced, fascinated by the friend’s visit.
I’m a carefree, a drunk carefree.

I’m drunk, a sober drunk.
I’m drunk. I’m aware.

I’m my own friend.
I’m the tar, I’m the setar.

I’m the world. I’ve no world.
I’m placeless. I’ve no place.

Look! I’ve no possessions.
I’m the head and the leader myself.

I’m not wiping my tears for no reason.
It’s better not to find a solution.

How come I don’t know my own pain?
I’m the doctor and the remedy myself.

I wandered around the universe.
For the friend’s sake I have broken my heart.

Oh poor me! I didn’t know
I ‘m the beloved and the lover myself.

Mazun, I made myself degraded.
I chose to be in love.

I gave my sole to the beloved.
Soul myself, devotee myself.

(S31)