Queen of the Night

she is scented smoke
curling across hot rooftops
petals wide open

Kim M. Russell, 2017

queen-of-the-night

Persian tobacco (Nicotiana alata) Credit: Photo by Franco Giordana found on luirig.altervista.org

My response to Carpe Diem #1166 Nightflower

Today Chèvrefeuille has shared with us a poem by Hafez (or Hafiz), whose poems every Iranian can recite, often using them to find an answer to a burning question. Hafez was a Sufi poet who, together with many Sufi masters, used wine as the symbol for love; the intoxication that results from both is why it is such a fitting comparison.  The poem is entitled ‘all the hemispheres’, taken from The Subject Tonight is Love, tr. Daniel Ladinsky.

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 watermark 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.

16 thoughts on “Queen of the Night”

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