We’re coming to the end of my first series of the ‘Poem For Your Journey’ project. Many thanks to those who have followed and shared this poetic adventure!

For February I’ve performed a poem by Hakim Sanai, a Persian poet who lived in the area that is now Afghanistan and died in the early 1100’s. His words in translation were adapted for use in the 2017 movie; The Shape of Water.

[if you’re on your mobile click ‘Listen in browser’ to hear this poem]

This was my first #PoemForYourJourney request from a singer who saw The Shape Of Water, fell in love with the movie and especially the poem it featured! Thrilled by the challenge, I set about checking the words to discover an online debate about the origin of the film’s poem.

Unable to discern the form of You,
 I see Your presence all around.
 Filling my eyes with the love of You,
 my heart is humbled,
 for You are everywhere.

If you know The Shape of Water, you’ll know that the words I’ve performed here are different to those they chose to present. In an interview published by the Gold Derby channel, Richard Jenkins (who plays Giles) talks about how the director, Guillermo del Toro, found the poem:

“Guillermo came up to me and he said, ‘I found this poem in a bookstore today. It’s written by a man hundreds of years ago,’ which I say in the narration. He said it was his love letter to God and we’re gonna use it. So that’s how that came to be.”

The words I’ve performed are from page 41 of ‘The Book of Everything, Journey of the Heart’s Desire, Hakim Sanai’s Walled Garden of the Truth’ which is generally considered to be the book Guillermo found that day in the bookstore.

While the origin was still unconfirmed, a literature specialist from the Library of Congress requested help from Fatemeh Keshavarz, University of Maryland Director at the School of Languages Literatures and Cultures.

Fatemeh said; “The concept that the beloved’s shape is not to be perceived by the lover because the beloved is omnipresence has become a universal love theme in Islamic lyric poetry because the concept is expressed in the Qur’an.”