poliphilo

I sat down and read some Rumi. In translation, of course. In fact in a translation of a translation because James Cowan is working from an English version by the Victorian scholar R.A. Nicholson. Cowan says Nicholson misses the poetry; to be honest I don't think he's hit it either. As an exercise in trying to understand what the thing was driving at I thought I'd try and put Cowan's version into my own words.

My version is exteremly spare, devoid of ornamentation- and much shorter than Cowan's. It is a translation of a translation of a translation. A dour Anglo-Saxon version of a Farsi original. All the same I think it makes sense....

After Rumi

The desert is endless, the pilgrim weary.
We are made in His Image, Indeed, indeed....

That severed head that rolls to your feet;
If you are serious, ask it its name.

If only we knew all the words of the song!
If only the bird wore Solomon's seal!

How say the thing that's beyond all words?
How stay mum when the heart's in pain?

Birds go high but Heaven is higher
While we exist beneath sky and Heaven..

This story says there'll be roses, roses.
Sadly, it's missing its final page.

Ask the great king who the great king is.