THE ULTIMATE PIRATE (and the Shanghai of Imagination) A FABLE by Paul Smith This long poem and the poems related to it were composed in 1973 while translating 'Divan of Hafiz'. The author had read Meher Baba's masterpiece 'God Speaks' that explained everything and in particular, the inner planes of consciousness... of which this is an imagined fable about such a journey. His 'Creative Imagination' at the time was so acute and deep that the journey at times seemed so real that he passed out from the bliss that he was experiencing. Since a child he had always loved pirate movies and to a...

*IQBAL* SELECTED POETRY Translation & Introduction by Paul Smith Muhammad Iqbal (1873-1938) was born in Sialkot, Punjab. He graduated from Government College, Lahore with a master's degree in philosophy. He taught there while he established his reputation as an Urdu poet. During this period his poetry expressed an ardent Indian nationalism, but a marked change came over his views when he was studying for his doctorate at Cambridge, visiting German universities and qualifying as a barrister. The philosophies of Nietzsche and Bergson influenced him and he became critical of Western civilization...

* RUBA'IYAT OF IQBAL * Translation & Introduction by Paul Smith Muhammad Iqbal (1873-1938) was born in Sialkot, Punjab. He graduated from Government College, Lahore with a master's degree in philosophy. He taught there while he established his reputation as an Urdu poet. During this period his poetry expressed an ardent Indian nationalism, but a marked change came over his views when he was studying for his doctorate at Cambridge, visiting German universities and qualifying as a barrister. The philosophies of Nietzsche and Bergson influenced him and he became critical of Western civilization...

TEAMAKER'S DIVAN... GHAZALS Paul Smith Paul Smith began to compose his own ghazals... an ancient Persian form of poetry and possibly the oldest form, while working on the ghazals of the great Persian poet Hafiz in the early seventies. After a few years he finally achieved mastery of this difficult and mysterious form of mystical love-poetry, the first to really do so in the English language. Over the following 40 years he continued to compose them while working on translations of all the great Sufi ghazal poets including Hafiz, Rumi, Mu'in, Jami, Khaqani, Amir Khusrau, Sadi, Nesimi and all...