Sit Down by the River (Ghazal #262)

Hafiz-I Shirazi (1315–1390) was a Persian lyric poet and a master of the ghazal. In 2009 Harper Perennial published a translation of his work by Robert Bly, titled The Angels Knocking on the Tavern Door.

Robert Bly (1926–2021) wrote numerous books of poetry, nonfiction, and translation. A collection of his new and selected prose poems, Reaching Out to the World, was published in 2009 by White Pine Press. He is widely attributed with sparking the Mythopoetic Men’s Movement in America.

Leonard Lewisohn is a Research Associate at the Centre of Near and Middle Eastern Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, as well as a Research Associate and lecturer in Persian at The Institute of Ismaili Studies. His works include Beyond Faith and Fidelity: The Sufi Poetry and Teachings of Mahmud Shabistari (London, 1993), a critical edition of Divan-i Muhammad Shirin Maghribi (Tehran, 1993), and several works of translation on Persian Sufism. (updated 2003)