Translated from the Persian by Homa Mojadidi
The Names Veiled the Named [Ghazal 38]
The wave covered the ocean’s face
The names veiled the named
It can’t fly without the wings of its name
No one has seen the Anqa’s nest
The purity of Yusuf’s beauty
Tore apart Zuleikha’s self-restraint
Every dawn the sun wears clumps of cotton
To make the heart’s wounds manifest
The path has opened its arms in every direction
It has torn open the desert’s collar
The eyes’ wetness couldn’t extinguish the heart’s fire
Clouds can’t calm the ocean’s turmoil
Awareness makes us silent, like a mirror
Seals the lips of our talking tongue
Silence is the lock that guards the treasure
Ask the pearl the key to this riddle
Bedil, if you’re aware of certainty’s mystery
Abandon this tale of I and us
Anqa: A mythical bird from ancient Arabic mythology, symbolizing rarity and elusiveness, mystical truths, and annihilation of the self.
Peace Reigns in Silence [Ghazal 17]
Peace reigns in silence there’s no conflict here
Become a closed bud hold calm’s hem within your grasp
Close your eyes if you wish to behold visions
Here, the mirror’s purity is draped in rust
It’s your misfortune if your heart doesn’t open up a path
The mirror’s house isn’t too narrow for anyone here
The bird of joy lives in bewilderment’s cage
Don’t hurry past this image-garden so full of colors here
Desiring wholeness on love’s path is a mistake
Even if the world turns to stone we grasp a piece of glass in our hand
Fling this swirling goblet far it’s merely an empty cup
Our intoxication here is the resonance of its sound
The heart’s desire follows the caravan of fleeing senses
Here, the traveler’s steps are the changing of colors
Don’t ask of the cruelties of fate
Every glance—a quiver of arrows aimed at the lover’s heart
Beware of the blood-filled glance
When the mirror turns to tears it becomes a shark’s mouth
How do you hope to become sober never having laid down the glass?
The hem of the pari’s grace is caught beneath the stone here
The two worlds contain the pain of leaving the self behind
Hearts beat to a constricted rhyme here
Pleasure’s destiny lies outside bewilderment’s realm
The flowers’ shadows have turned the meadow into a leopard’s back
True fear is to leave the self behind without ever having arrived
So long as desire for haste remains there are only delays here
The mirror, symbol of truth, divine manifestation, or universal being, is open to all faces. If you find yourself excluded, the fault lies not with the mirror’s narrowness but with your own heart’s constriction.
The tear is often a symbol of sincerity and devotion, but Bedil subverts the tear/mirror image into a shark’s mouth, symbolizing annihilation and the danger of being consumed.
Pari, literally means fairy, a supernatural being from Persian mythology who is delicate, beautiful, ethereal, associated with enchantment, and believed to reside within a glass bottle.
Wings of Desire [Ghazal 32]
Your colorful lines have twined around hearts
The flowers’ veins thread our gathering together
Your graceful gait gave me wings of desire I flew towards bewilderment
Like the dove my eye holds the rim of the cypress-like glass
Closing my eyes turned my gaze into imagination’s lamp
Even effacing the self failed to rid the lover of the desire to see the beloved
I can’t find a secure corner in this gathering
Like the candle my footprints become my collar
I lack a handful of soil to build self-restraint
This mad love spread the desert’s hem upon my ruins
Except for nonbeing there’s no image on nonexistence’s tablet
If you don’t want to show us a glimpse make us your mirror
My present state doesn’t fear the future
I lost in the past’s embrace my today and tomorrow
This turmoil isn’t caused by the wind’s waves
Someone’s feverish frenzy makes the ocean’s pulse dance
What flowers, besides withering can silence scatter in your lap?
If you’ve been set free mend your limbs with your groans
Why claim permanence in existence’s fleeting moment?
Like a reflection assume your place outside the mirror’s house
A scar is the flame’s gift. If you desire peace
don’t trade your prostrating forehead for a hundred necks
Bedil, no traces remain here except names as long as you exist
you’re of this world now, count the patterns on the phoenix’s wings
The Heart’s Breaking [Ghazal 119]
Ease doesn’t offer my mind any freshness
Only the heart’s breaking can fill my cup
The night that my eyes will brighten with seeing you
Bewilderment will light my candle’s wick
I have such a wine from despair’s searing lightning bolt
Even the flame won’t kiss my cup’s lip
The wine’s pleasure was in being enclosed in the flask
Blooming made my whole garden split open with desire
The crapulence of heaven’s glass shows in its turning upside down
How can it cure my mind’s heaviness?
How long will negligence peak from the furrows on your forehead?
Don’t turn my corner of rest into a breeding ground for intrigue A
thousand colors bloomed from my dark fate
The world bestowed my crow with the peacock’s colors
Like the kohl’s wave, I hide in enchanting eyes
Seek my trace from the loop of the gazelle’s flight
Don’t seek coldness from my heart. Since my origin
they cut with the flame’s blade my umbilical cord
Perhaps Bedil’s heart’s been emptied of groans
Silence is the lesson disclosed by my garden’s nightingale
Mirza Abdul Qadir Bedil was a 17th Century Sufi poet born in Patna, India, in 1642. Bedil’s poetry is considered one of the most challenging to decipher and interpret, given his complex syntax, literary allusions and conundrums, and unique compound words and innovative expressions. Despite being a literary giant in the Persian speaking world, Bedil is virtually unknown to the Western world, and not well-known even in his native India because his work remains largely untranslated into English. In addition to his collection of ghazals and quatrains—Kulliyat-e-Bedil (The Collected Works of Bedil), Bedil’s work includes his four masnavis— Muhit-e Azam (The Greatest Ocean), Tilismi Hairat (The Talisman of Wonder), Tur-e-Marifat (The Mount of Knowledge), and Irfan, his autobiographical prose work Char Ansur (The Four Elements).
Homa Mojadidi is an Afghan American poet and translator. Her poetry manuscript, In Search of the Traceless, is forthcoming from 3: A Taos Press. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Asymptote, Washington Square Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Northwest Review, West Trade Review, Gulf Stream, Sonora Review, South Carolina Review, Mudlark, Blue Mountain Review, One Art, and Calyx. Her work explores themes of loss, exile, memory, and mysticism. Homa holds an M.A. in English Literature from the University of North Florida and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, with a concentration in poetry, from George Mason University.