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Today is Rumi’s birthday

I’m a hunter with a heart.

Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi (born September 30, 1207) is the greatest Sufi mystic and poet in the Persian language, born in Bakh, which is nowadays Afghanistan. Nowadays Rumi has been taken in by New Age spirituality, and exoticism. Well, I have a book that I brought back from my journey to Iran in 2008. It has beautiful artwork and Rumi poems in Persian and English, translated by Persian writers for the most part, not Westerners. These translations I cherish, they are more original, and have puzzling typos :) The same "problem" goes for translations of Hafiz. And even the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, whose English versions always surprise me: really, is that what it is supposed to mean? In German, Rilke’s language is more complex, ambiguous, evocative, not as easy to grasp, inviting us to ponder, and wonder. Of course we always lose when translating. But I find in American English things are “explained” and therefore lend themselves for spoon fed wisdom and short quotes :)

My joy is beyond the cups of your frantic imagination;

Now I’ve broken free of the dull gravity of knowledge

I take it and use it and do not let it oppress and abuse me,

Like insects we are trapped in the web of thought,

We are entwined in cords of anguish from moment to moment.

I can visit thought with diplomatic lightness ready and able

To spring away with a flick of a finger from its net when I will.

Thought is my prey waiting for my will, I’m a hunter with a heart. 

Can we make a heart connection from revered poet Rumi to ravaged Afghanistan? Or even Iran. Our supposed “enemies”? Their old and highly sophisticated cultures and arts are actually beyond us. Much of their writing influenced the beloved Romantic poets Blake, Keats, Wordsworth, Walt Whitman, Victor Hugo, Goethe, Brentano, Novalis, Heine, etc., to name a just a few…..

Today – may we bow to Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi.

I’m a hunter with a heart.

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