This interview originally appeared:

https://bowerypoetry.podbean.com/

Three poems by Rumi translated by Haleh Liza Gafori

Let’s love each other,

let’s cherish each other, my friend, before we lose each other. 

You’ll long for me when I’m gone.

You’ll make a truce with me. 

So why put me on trial while I’m alive?

Why adore the dead but battle the living? 

You’ll kiss the headstone of my grave.

Look, I’m lying here still as a corpse,

dead as a stone. Kiss my face instead!

————————

Let Love, 

the water of life, 

flow through our veins. 

Let a Love-drunk mirror 

steeped in the wine of dawn 

translate night. 

You who pour the wine, 

put the cup of oneness in my hand and let me drink from it 

until I can’t imagine separation. 

Love, you are the archer. 

My mind is your prey. 

Carry my heart 

and make my existence your bullseye.

——————————–

Open your eyes to the four streams 

flowing through you— 

water, milk, honey, wine. 

Pay no attention to what gossips say. 

They call the wide-eyed flower jasmine. 

They call the wide-eyed flower a thorn. 

The wide-eyed flower doesn’t care what they call it.

I adore that freedom. I bow to it. 

Some say you worship fire. 

Some say you follow scripture. 

What do they know? 

Labels blind and tear us apart. 

Your eyes are not a vulture’s beak. 

See through the Beloved’s eyes. 

See one when your mind says two. 

The angels adore your Love-drunk eyes. 

Open them 

and dismiss the vicious judge from the post you gave him. 

Bow to a human 

and greet the angel.