Dodging Creditors and Feeling Hog-tied.

This is a wonderful poem by Hafiz (1320-1389) and translated by Daniel Ladinsky, A Year with Hafiz. It reminds to ask the question what is it that I really want.....if I had only one wish in the whole world.

Dodging Creditors and Feeling Hog-tied.

You might think twice about leaving the sidelines
of love where you are allowed to dawdle.

I wouldn't enter the real playing field unless you
had no other choice. Surely you can come up with
another good excuse.

You could run up some more debt. That could keep
you busy dodging creditors, like a rabbit might the
fox's hunger.

Maybe get a lover on the side, maybe two, maybe
three, that would probably assure a delay in having
to get serious about any inner life for quite a spell,

before you finally decide you do in fact have
to cough up some intelligent effort at some point.

What is the value of putting your faith into
practice and concluding there really is something
to all this.......God stuff?

Well, for openers: It can become a solid wooden
bench you can stand on to see over a hedge that

now keeps your awareness so limited you sometimes
feel hog-tied and wish you were dead.