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Poetry review – WATER: Tim Murphy reviews Haleh Liza Gafori’s new translation of Rumi’s poetry
Water
Rumi (translated by Haleh Liza Gafori)
New York Review Books, 2025
ISBN 978-1-68137-916-6
$14.95
This edition of fifty-four poems by Jalal al-Din Mohammad Balkhy, the thirteenth century poet known in English as Rumi, is translated from the Persian by Haleh Liza Gafori. Gafori previously translated the same number of Rumi’s poems for Gold, a selection published in 2022. In her introduction to Water, the translator says that while Gold ‘highlights Rumi’s rhapsodic, ecstatic side’, the present volume features more ‘moody’ work by this widely read poet.
Born in what is today Afghanistan, the young Rumi followed his father in becoming a jurist-theologian in what is today Turkey. Rumi later began writing poetry at around the age of 40 and his best-known work appears in two books, the Masnavi, a volume of narrative and didactic poetry, and the Diwan-e Shams-e Tabrizi, a book of lyric poetry dedicated to the poet’s Sufi friend and mentor, Shams of Tabriz.
All but one poem in Water is an excerpt from, or a complete, ghazal or rubaiyat (set of quatrains) from the Diwan-e Shams-e Tabrizi. The dichotomy running through Rumi’s lyric poetry is between egoistic humans and the higher plane of love; and the poet’s heart ‘breaks’ when he looks out ‘on the old turning wheel of the world — / the trickery, snares, and deception’ (‘My heart breaks when I look out’):
Man, man, man,
What kind of lightning are you, setting farms on fire?
What kind of cloud are you, raining down stones?
What kind of hunter?
Caught in your own trap —
a thief stealing from your own house.
You’re sixty years old, you’re seventy years old,
and you’re still uncooked?
Still won’t let Love’s flames near,
won’t let them burn you up?
There is great poignancy here; and the lines are an excellent example of the direct contemporary feel that Gafori, by means of her own considerable poetic skills, consistently brings to these translations.
At times the power of love is depicted with direct reference to the ego (‘And who am I when Love obliterates the I / I thought I was’; “I travelled to every city”); at other times it has a religious dimension (‘the dwelling place of Love’ is ‘the God inside’; “Seekers on a Pilgrimage”); and on other occasions still, as in this complete poem, it is romantic love: ‘Beloved, when your sweetness rains down / the price of rock candy plummets.’
Eros, philia, agape — all of these and more describe the broad church that is ‘love’ for Rumi, and the search for love should know no bounds; if necessary, one should ‘go to the kitchen in Love’s house / and lick the plates lovers left behind’ (“The garden’s scent is a messenger”).
Sufism emphasizes the love in discipleship, and Rumi expresses this feeling towards his mentor, Shams of Tabriz: ‘Shams, king and truth of Tabriz’, Rumi declares in “Lover nears lover”, ‘in your presence, my patience / is a tattered old shirt’. The same theme is found in “Love is full of baits and traps”:
People were spreading rumors.
Jealous people, they drove my beloved Shams from town.
When we searched and didn’t find him,
they rejoiced.
The dominance of the love motif in this collection — Gafori has noted that the book includes 96 mentions of the word — does not eclipse Rumi’s other spiritual concerns. There are recurring warnings about the dangers of materialism and social expectations: ‘Don’t trade the water of your soul / for a morsel of bread’ (“The world’s river stopped flowing”), for example, and ‘What the world has called work, / I work hard not to do’ (“My heart breaks when I look out”). In similar vein, these lines from “I’ll never tire of you” prioritize music and dance over reputation:
Listen, you said. Listen to the music.
Though you might lose what you call dignity,
though you might stain your reputation,
dance the whirling dance.
The ‘whirling dance’ is sama, the dance of the Whirling Dervishes, a Sufi sect that was created after Rumi’s death in 1273. Several poems celebrate the spiritual ecstasy that is attainable through the combination of dance and ‘deep listening’ in sama (“What is sama?”). ‘Lit by lightning, we flash like spring clouds’, Rumi writes in “The whirling dance leaves the heart restless for more”:
Venus, you know this ecstasy.
Open your generous palms to the musicians.
Their hands — and drums — are spent.
The imagery is similarly striking, even psychedelic, in poems like “Though I appear to be walking through the alley of my beloved”, in which the poet clarifies that he is in fact ‘riding a green horse on the spinning wheel of the cosmos // A hundred worlds traversed in one breath, / and I’ve taken only one step.’
Rumi’s aversion to materialism is frequently expressed as calling the reader back to the spiritual majesty of the natural world (“Fresh, blissful — the moment”):
The garden’s murmurs, the garden’s music,
the babbling brook of birdsong flows through us
like the water of life, we walk among roses, you and me.
In “Even spring rains”, the only inclusion in Water from the Masnavi, natural imagery is invoked for compelling effect. After a strong admonition, ‘A hard, sharp stone, / you broke hearts for years — / a barren life’, comes the true path: ‘Be soil. / For once, try. / Color after color springs from soil.’
Overall, Water is an engaging book full of passion, wit and wisdom — and a great introduction to this master of poetic form and expression for which the translator deserves enormous credit. Even in this selection of ostensibly ‘moody’ work, there are several strong strains of spiritual joy, and the reader is left with a deeper understanding of Rumi’s timeless appeal — and of why, although he was strongly Islamic in religious outlook, his mausoleum in Konya in Turkey is said to be the most popular pilgrimage site to be regularly visited by adherents of every major religion.
Sep 5 2025
WATER – Haleh Liza Gafori’s new translation of Rumi’s poetry
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Poetry review – WATER: Tim Murphy reviews Haleh Liza Gafori’s new translation of Rumi’s poetry
This edition of fifty-four poems by Jalal al-Din Mohammad Balkhy, the thirteenth century poet known in English as Rumi, is translated from the Persian by Haleh Liza Gafori. Gafori previously translated the same number of Rumi’s poems for Gold, a selection published in 2022. In her introduction to Water, the translator says that while Gold ‘highlights Rumi’s rhapsodic, ecstatic side’, the present volume features more ‘moody’ work by this widely read poet.
Born in what is today Afghanistan, the young Rumi followed his father in becoming a jurist-theologian in what is today Turkey. Rumi later began writing poetry at around the age of 40 and his best-known work appears in two books, the Masnavi, a volume of narrative and didactic poetry, and the Diwan-e Shams-e Tabrizi, a book of lyric poetry dedicated to the poet’s Sufi friend and mentor, Shams of Tabriz.
All but one poem in Water is an excerpt from, or a complete, ghazal or rubaiyat (set of quatrains) from the Diwan-e Shams-e Tabrizi. The dichotomy running through Rumi’s lyric poetry is between egoistic humans and the higher plane of love; and the poet’s heart ‘breaks’ when he looks out ‘on the old turning wheel of the world — / the trickery, snares, and deception’ (‘My heart breaks when I look out’):
There is great poignancy here; and the lines are an excellent example of the direct contemporary feel that Gafori, by means of her own considerable poetic skills, consistently brings to these translations.
At times the power of love is depicted with direct reference to the ego (‘And who am I when Love obliterates the I / I thought I was’; “I travelled to every city”); at other times it has a religious dimension (‘the dwelling place of Love’ is ‘the God inside’; “Seekers on a Pilgrimage”); and on other occasions still, as in this complete poem, it is romantic love: ‘Beloved, when your sweetness rains down / the price of rock candy plummets.’
Eros, philia, agape — all of these and more describe the broad church that is ‘love’ for Rumi, and the search for love should know no bounds; if necessary, one should ‘go to the kitchen in Love’s house / and lick the plates lovers left behind’ (“The garden’s scent is a messenger”).
Sufism emphasizes the love in discipleship, and Rumi expresses this feeling towards his mentor, Shams of Tabriz: ‘Shams, king and truth of Tabriz’, Rumi declares in “Lover nears lover”, ‘in your presence, my patience / is a tattered old shirt’. The same theme is found in “Love is full of baits and traps”:
The dominance of the love motif in this collection — Gafori has noted that the book includes 96 mentions of the word — does not eclipse Rumi’s other spiritual concerns. There are recurring warnings about the dangers of materialism and social expectations: ‘Don’t trade the water of your soul / for a morsel of bread’ (“The world’s river stopped flowing”), for example, and ‘What the world has called work, / I work hard not to do’ (“My heart breaks when I look out”). In similar vein, these lines from “I’ll never tire of you” prioritize music and dance over reputation:
The ‘whirling dance’ is sama, the dance of the Whirling Dervishes, a Sufi sect that was created after Rumi’s death in 1273. Several poems celebrate the spiritual ecstasy that is attainable through the combination of dance and ‘deep listening’ in sama (“What is sama?”). ‘Lit by lightning, we flash like spring clouds’, Rumi writes in “The whirling dance leaves the heart restless for more”:
The imagery is similarly striking, even psychedelic, in poems like “Though I appear to be walking through the alley of my beloved”, in which the poet clarifies that he is in fact ‘riding a green horse on the spinning wheel of the cosmos // A hundred worlds traversed in one breath, / and I’ve taken only one step.’
Rumi’s aversion to materialism is frequently expressed as calling the reader back to the spiritual majesty of the natural world (“Fresh, blissful — the moment”):
In “Even spring rains”, the only inclusion in Water from the Masnavi, natural imagery is invoked for compelling effect. After a strong admonition, ‘A hard, sharp stone, / you broke hearts for years — / a barren life’, comes the true path: ‘Be soil. / For once, try. / Color after color springs from soil.’
Overall, Water is an engaging book full of passion, wit and wisdom — and a great introduction to this master of poetic form and expression for which the translator deserves enormous credit. Even in this selection of ostensibly ‘moody’ work, there are several strong strains of spiritual joy, and the reader is left with a deeper understanding of Rumi’s timeless appeal — and of why, although he was strongly Islamic in religious outlook, his mausoleum in Konya in Turkey is said to be the most popular pilgrimage site to be regularly visited by adherents of every major religion.