Hafiz: "What Happens"

What happens when your soul
Begins to awaken
Your eyes
And your heart
And the cells of your body
To the great Journey of Love?

First there is wonderful laughter
And probably precious tears

And a hundred sweet promises
And those heroic vows
No one can ever keep.

But still God is delighted and amused
You once tried to be a saint.

What happens when your soul
Begins to awake in this world

To our deep need to love
And serve the Friend?

O the Beloved

Will send you
One of His wonderful, wild companions—

Like Hafiz.

"What Happens" by Hafiz. Text as published in I Heard God Laughing: Renderings of Hafiz (Sufism Reoriented, 1996). Purported to be translated from the original Persian (Farsi) by Daniel Ladinsky.

Please note that Ladinsky's "translations" are controversial, considered by many to be less Hafiz than Ladinsky himself.

Art credit: "White Dove landing on hand," image by unknown photographer with Getty Images.