What It Means - Day 296

I Wish I Could Speak Like Music

I wish I could speak like music.

I wish I could put the swaying splendor

Of the fields into words

So that you could hold Truth

Against your body

And dance.

I am trying the best I can

With this crude brush, the tongue,

Top cover you with light.

I wish I could speak like divine music.

I want to give you the sublime rhythms

Of this earth and the sky's limbs

As they joyously spin and surrender,

Surrender

Against God's luminous breath.

Hafiz wants you to hold me

Against your precious Body

And dance,

Dance.

Hafiz

Ultra orthodox Muslims such as the Wahabbis have a very tortured relationship with music - well, actually, I suppose I shouldn't say tortured because they are actively opposed to music. It's probably better to say that Islam itself has a bit of a tortured relationship with music, since some like the Wahabbis think it is absolutely haram and others like the Sufis find it an essential path to the divine.  If you consider that the divine is, by definition, ineffable, then music seems as good a medium as any to express it.