A True Friend

a true friend’s doorway
offers shelter and succour
to the injured soul
soothes the exhausted body
and repairs the wounded heart

Kim M. Russell, 2017

Image of the painting ‘The Restorer Of Wounded Heart’ by Madalena Lobao-Tello found on Fine Art America. 

My response to Carpe Diem #1171 wounded heart

Today Chèvrefeuille has brought us another episode of Carpe Diem Haiku Kai and introduced another Persian poet: Imrani, or Emrani (1454–1536), a Judæo-Persian poet, ‘one of the most prominent Jewish poets of Iran’. His major work, Fatḥ-Nameh (“The Book of the Conquest,” begun in 1474, unfinished), describes in poetry ‘the events of the biblical books of Joshua, Ruth, and Samuel’. Emrānī’s last great work, Ganj-Nameh (The Book of the Treasures), is a ‘free poetic paraphrase of and commentary on the mishnaic treatise Avot’, on which the following poem is based:

My body exhausted, my soul injured, and my heart wounded
I am estranged from the Beloved and distant from myself
I am worn out as the wretched
I am distraught and mournful as the beggars
Having lost the essence of youth,
My soul has grown old for want of strength
Yet!  Despite all these pains which I have,
I will survive should You become my friend
O You whose doorway is the shelter for the dervish
To you everyone has attached the hopes of his heart
Since I have returned to Your Doorway,
Lift me in kindness and sooth my soul.

© Imrani

Chèvrefeuille says that, in his opinion, this poem describes despair and the poet’s will to find his path again which, he reminds us, is what Basho when he decided to change his style of haiku writing.