Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West

404 Pages·2002·40.35 MB·English

by  Daniel Ladinsky

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LOVE POEMS FROM GOD
DANIEL Ladinsky was born in 1948 and raised in St. Louis,
Missouri. For six years he made his home in western India,
where he worked in a rural clinic free to the poor and lived
with the family of Meher Baba, who some consider to have
been the Christ come again. He has published three volumes
of Hafiz's poetry in translation: The Gift, The Subject Tonight
Is Love, and / Heard God Laughing. He plans to retire to his
mountain farm with his sweetheart Kathy and their four dogs
and two
cats.
Also by Daniel Ladinsky
The
Gift
Poems by Hafiz, the Great Sufi Master
The Subject Tonight Is Love
60 Wild and Sweet Poems of Hafiz
/ Heard God Laughing
Renderings of Hafiz
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Twelve Sacred Voices
V from the 7
East and West
Translated by
DANIEL LADINSKY
Penguin Compass
PENGUIN COMPASS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Putnam Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Books Ltd,
WC2R
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:
Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England
First published in Penguin Compass 2002
13579 8642
10
©
Copyright Daniel Ladinsky, 2002
All rights reserved
ISBN0 14 21.9612 6
CIP data available
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Set in Adobe Garamond
Designed by M. Paul
Except in the United States ofAmerica, this book is sold subject to
the condition that it shall not, by way oftrade or otherwise,
be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without
the publisher's prior consent in any form ofbinding or
cover other than that in which it is published and
without a similar condition including this
condition being imposed on the
subsequent purchaser.
God
said,
"I am made whole byyour life. Each soul,
each soul completes
me.
—
Hafiz

\jcknowlcdotnents
This book would not have happened without my agent, Tom
Grady. After over two years ofworking on it, I somewhat collapsed
with a furlong to go, and he literally got it home when I was ready
to give up. His name should also be on the cover, but he wouldn't
me
let put it there.
And Kathy, my sweetheart of seven years, do you mind if I
call you Sweet Potato in public? Your astounding patience and love
helped me to remove my alloy from this gold.
I thank my old buddy Alfio Grasso for his remarkable com-
pass, and his wonderful heart and multilinguistic skills with Italian,
Spanish, and Latin.
The beautiful Rumi translations by Farideh Azodi David-
my
son (that I one day found in mailbox unexpectedly, while work-
ing on my chapter on Rumi) proved a grand and timely springboard
for some poems in this book. I hope some publisher seeks you out,
Farideh. Hint: she lives in Spruce Pine, North Carolina.
My
editors at Penguin, Janet Goldstein and Jennifer
Ehmann, deserve lavish thanks and kisses for their clarity and
support.
And thanks to Ali Akbar Shapurzaman, Nisha Luck, Sam
Kerawala, M. Khorshed, and General McDonald for some
J.,
translations in these languages: Farsi, Hindi, Marthti, and
Gujarati.
Thanks also to Father O'Farrel for giving some ofthese po-
ems distemper shots.
^ £
vii
The three hundred poems in this book were selected
from over a thousand I stole from God when He made the mistake
of letting me go through His files, so it seemed. Thanks, God, for
not suing me. Maybe we will publish more of this wonderful con-
traband.
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