Your Daily Dose of Ecstasy

Qawwali is a form of Sufi devotional music that has manifested as a type of popular music centered in Pakistan but which has spread across Asia. It is exemplified by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan who is widely considered to have been one of the best singers the human race has ever produced. Here's a little Nusrat to make your heart beam.

And courtesy of Daniel Ladinsky's powers of translation, here is a little Hafiz:

Venus Just Asked Me

Perhaps

For just one minute out of the day

It may be of value to torture yourself

With thoughts like,

"I should be doing

A hell of a lot more with my life than I am —

Cause I'm so damn talented."

But remember,

For just one minute out of the day.

With all the rest of your time,

It would be best

To try

Looking upon your self more as God does.

For He knows

Your true royal nature.

God is never confused

And can see Only Himself in you.

My dear,

Venus just leaned down and asked me

To tell you a secret, to confess

She's just a mirror who has been stealing

Your light and music for centuries.

She knows as does Hafiz,

You are the sole heir to

The King.

Finally, a fragment from Rainer Maria Rilke's Uncollected Poems:

Looking up from my book, from the close countable lines,

into the finished-full night outside:

how in starry measure my packed feelings scatter,

as though a bouquet of wildflowers

were being untied:

youth of the light ones and bending sway of the heavy ones

and the tender ones' hesitant curve—.

Everywhere joy in relation and nowhere any craving;

world in excess and earth sufficient.