Rumi: Poet of the Heart Page #3

the comings..."

"you enter suddenly and I am

nowhere again..."

"inside the majesty."

"I... you..."

"he... she..."

"we..."

"In the garden of mystical lovers..."

"these...

"are not true... distinctions."

"I... you..."

"he... she..."

"we"

I feel very grateful to Coleman Barks

for having introduced me to a world...

that I knew existed, that I yearned for.

There was an agony of wishing in

my heart.

but I didn't know how to find it.

I'd found it through other means,

through other poets...

but never with the intensity and passion

of Rumi. So...

I owe a great debt of gratitude

to Coleman Barks.

for bringing me to that world.

We know Rumi through his poetry.

But in a sense that isn't his poetry...

because his poetry was in Persian, Farsi.

And we read him in English.

And the difficulties, the problems...

are also the mysterious connection

that occurs...

but also a difference in translation

is an abiding fester...

for all translators, but especially

for poets.

First time I ever heard of Rumi was at one

of Robert Bly's conferences in 1976.

When he handed me a book of

scholarly translations...

by A.J Arberry and said these poems need

to be released from their cages, you know.

And so I began rephrasing Arberry's English...

and in the course of that a sequence of

coincidences happened...

and I met a Sufi teacher...

Abdullah Nujaladeen.

And he told me to do this work.

And if I had not sat in his presence

for about 9 years on and off...

I would have no idea what Rumi was

about or what he did.

I believe in both translations and versions.

In the translation...

one has to know the language, for

example Spanish.

when you translate Neruda. And then

Neruda's a contemporary and so...

you can feel the turns and you can feel...

the sorrow, where it is in the sentence

and which words have tremendous sorrow...

even in Spanish and continue them.

And then you follow the emotional mood

of that line... and um...

Then there's a translator. I'm responsible

for the accuracy.

I still may make many mistakes I'll

always find a speaker who...

knew Spanish and English in the cradle.

Because that's where the sounds are

first heard.

Version is a different thing for me.

I found Kabir and I thought that

was so fantastic.

I thought what it would it sound like

if it were written today.

So I made a guess at the lines, and they

are not accurate.

You're making a guess. You're bringing

it up to modern times, you're putting in...

But the aim of those translations, the

aim of versions...

is to bring in poets so unusual,

so amazing...

that you'd rather have an inaccurate

translation then none at all.

I work with scholars who give me

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