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Here, Sunlight offers two renderings of Mowlana Rumi's Ghazal
(Ode) 132: a translation by Kolin and Mafi, and a translation by
A.J. Arberry.
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Behind the blood-stained curtains of Love
there are fields of flowers
where the lovers wander.
While the mind sees only boundaries
Love knows the secret way there.
While the mind smells profit and quickly sets up shop
Love sees untold of treasures far beyond.
Lovers trust in the wealth of their hearts
while the all-knowing mind sees only thorns ahead.
To wander in the fields of flowers
pull the thorns from your heart.
-- Translation by Azima Melita Kolin
and Maryam Mafi
"Rumi: Hidden Music"
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, 2001
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lover has rosebowers amid the veil of blood; lovers have
affairs to transact with the beauty of incomparable Love. (1)
Reason says, "The six directions are the boundary, and there is
no way out"; Love says, "There is a way, and I have many times
travelled it."
Reason beheld a bazaar, and began trading; Love has beheld
many bazaars beyond Reason's bazaar. (2)
Many a hidden Mansur (3) there is, who, confiding in the soul of
Love, abandoned the pulpit and mounted the scaffold.
Dreg-sucking lovers possess ecstatic perceptions inwardly;
men of reason, dark of heart, entertain denials within them.
Reason says, "Set not your foot down, for in the courtyard (4)
there is naught but thorns"; Love says, "These thorns belong to
the reason which is within you."
Beware, be silent; pluck the thorn of being out of the heart's
foot, that you may behold the rosebowers within you.
Shams-I Tabrizi, you are the sun within the cloud of words;
when your sun arose, all speech was obliterated.
-- Translation by A.J. Arberry
"Mystical Poems of Rumi 1"
The University of Chicago Press 1968/1991
(1) The sufferings of love lead to incomparable joy.
(2) Love knows to transcend the physical universe of Reason.
(3) The reference is to Hallaj, the martyr-mystic, executed in
309/922.
(4) "The courtyard": perhaps "annihilation (fana).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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