shouldunderstandIt,anddeafnessupontheirears.Sowheneveryoumention
yourLord,theOneHimself,intheQur’ān,theyturntheirbacksinloathing...
(17:45–6).Ḥāfiẓ’s intelligent readers – in his own time, as today – would immediately recog-
nizeherethedramatic(and,onesuspects,quiteintentional)parallelstothealmost
identical forms of spiritual incomprehension and misunderstanding that his own
inspiredverseshavesofrequentlyencounteredthroughouthistory.Line6:DiscoveringtheDivineSecretIn this penultimate line, Ḥāfiẓ – or the enlightened persona who has spoken
throughoutmostoftheprecedinglines–directlyaddressesthestrident,previously
unnamed‘pretentiouscritic’(mudda‘ī)whosevoicewefirstencounteredinthesec-
ondhalfoftheopeningverse,whowaslookingthereforthe(humanlymanipulable
orknowable)this-worldly‘cause’(sabab)forallthosereprehensiblefeaturesofthis
world and creation, which such characters (within each of us!) unavoidably see as
the signs of an inexplicable divine tardiness, absence or general failure to perfect
theworldaccordingtothefantasiesoftheirownimagination.TheMysterythatlies
beyond the veil of the celestial spheres (falak), of course, is the infinite divine
domainofthespiritualandimaginalworldsoftheHeart–arealitytooofteninvis-
ible and silent for such veiled and deafened characters, as the underlying Qur’ānic
versejustcitedsopointedlyemphasizes.
ButḤāfiẓ’sessentialpointherehasnothingtodowiththerelativemeritsofpar-
ticular philosophical or theological schemas of causality. Instead, the poet’s bold
exhortation of ‘Silence!’ here – explicitly echoing one of Rumi’s favourite closing
injunctions in so many of his celebratedghazals – is not so much an expression of
impatience,asitistheindispensablefirstpracticalsteptowardstheHeart’seventual
spiritualopeningandtransformation.Eventheslightesteffortofattemptedmedita-
tionandsilence,aswecanallonlytooeasilyverify,quicklyrevealsboththeradical
contrast between the inspirations and illuminations of the heart, on the one hand,
andtheendlesschatteringandquarrellingandplottingoftheego(nafs),ofourrecal-
citrant‘monkey-mind’thatis,indeed,sorarelytrulysilenced.Ḥāfiẓ’sfinalquestion,
at the end of the second half-line here, pushes the ‘pretender-critic’ to pursue that
processofmeditationandintrospection–oftheconstantQur’ānicinjunctionofdhikr
or spiritual recollection, in all its senses – even more deeply, until we begin to dis-
cover all the depths of pride, impulse, manipulation and grandiose self-divination
lurkingbeneaththisonlytoofamiliarhiddenquarrelwithGod.
Now precisely to the extent that Ḥāfiẓ’s reader takes this injunction and ques-
tion to heart, this penultimate verse will quickly begin to revealanother very dif-
ferent, entirely transformed meaning. For the complex cosmological associations
ofthekeytermssababandfalak,^12 aswehaveexplained,inevitablysuggestatfirst
glance that the ‘Veil’ and ‘Veil-Keeper’ mentioned here must refer to God and to
Ḥāfiẓ’sRomanticImageryandLanguageofLove 245