Hafiz 4

Here is another poem by Hafiz, this one also from 2009, translated by Dan Ladinsky:

DIVIDING GOD  

The moon starts singing when everyone is asleep and the planets throw a bright robe around their shoulders and whirl up close to her side.    

Once I asked the moon, why do you and your sweet friends not perform so romantically like that to a larger crowd? And the whole sky chorus resounded:

The admission price to hear the lofty minstrels speak of love is affordable only to those who have not exhausted themselves dividing God all day and thus need rest.   

The thrilled Tavern fiddlers who are perched on the roof do not want their notes to intrude upon the ears where an accountant lives with a sharp pencil, keeping a score of words that another in their great sorrow or sad anger may have once said to you.   

Hafiz knows:  The sun will stand as your best man and whistle when you have found the courage  to marry forgiveness, when you have found the courage to marry Love.

We forgive our students and ourselves for all stupid judgements. We stop trying to divide language into little pieces and grade it that way, which is exhausting. We just create language with them, and then they learn more and feel better doing it. We know that when we do this, the words are not the big deal. The meaning is the big deal.

How do we create meaning? We personalize our classes around each child. For this we need to try to become minstrels. Perched on the roof, the minstrels in the poem above reach into the heart of their listeners in the same way that we must reach into the hearts of our students, not through words but through meaningful input, which is based on trust.