Richard Oh

Quatrains of Rumi
Translated by John Moyne & Coleman Barks
83 Pages
Shambhala

Listen to presences inside poems.
Let them take you where they will.

Follow those private hints,
and never leave the premises. (p.37)

This Rubaiyat is one of the 166 quatrains in Unseen Rain. Written in the ecstatically spontaneous middle period after Rumi’s meeting with Shams, the mystic who upon seeing Rumi drowned all his books and asked him to learn from the experiences of real life. This short poem is very useful for those who wish to gain the most out of these quatrains.

It helps us uncover the mystique of Rumi’s search for the union of the soul with the spirit. It’s easy to be persuaded by the understanding of the union of the soul and the spirit as the vacuous state of a trance, but Rumi warns emphatically that we never leave the premises, which suggests that while we are in a flight for those private hints, those ecstatic emanations, the center of our being will nonetheless remain in place.

For centuries the circles of Sufi have developed sama, the ceremony of listening and moving to music, to spoken and sung poetry or scripture, based on Rumi’s expansion on Bahauddin’s, his father’s, entry on a note about the four birds of the psyche. The following is Coleman Barks’ translation of the 9 steps on the ladders to the state of sama.

1. Deep listening has a pulse. It must throb, or it is not alive.
2. The words and music of sama should flow and follow naturally as a conversation among friends.
3. As a scoop pours seed, song pours into the bucket of hearing. There may be a few rotten seeds, words that aren’t right. Don’t blame the scoop.
4. Glasswork takes many shapes. The inward Baghdad curve with its translucent yellow, the Samarcand crimson, the spherical crystal flasks of Bokhara. So it is with music and poetry: sama should have an elegant variety.
5. When we set extra tables and open doors to invite guests in, we don’t serve them food that’s gone bad. When that happens, as it will, it’s an accident. But if someone is known to have intentionally served tainted meat or drink, the curse of having done so will never leave, no matter how many generous actions accumulate. Let sama be fresh and lovingly prepared.
6. Poetry spoken with music and movement should move along like spring thunder: emphasis, a softer stress, a space of silence, more thunder, then the dying out. It never goes on too long.
7. If laughter isn’t underneath and inside sama, if there’s no bright, self-humbling wit, the praise-words will have no truth; the exaltation, no majesty. Without humor, sama becomes leaden and stern.
8. (& 9) Each body part has a musical preference. Each enjoys sama in a unique way. Ears absorb sound differently than does the heart. Words spoken with plucked string may jar the eardrum but delight the heart-center, or the opposite: something mellifluous may disgust your soul’s intelligence. Kidneys hate it when the fingers tap rhythm. The drumming makes them nervous. However, the lungs love everything fingers do.

With sama, let these nine metaphors guide you: a heart-beat rhythm, a lively conversation among friends, the smooth pouring of seed from a scoop, the elegant variety of glasswork. The feel of a banquet, spring thunder, and laughter in the outdoor air. Sama must move with its multiple harmonic systems working like the organs in a human body, each having its separate function and delight, while carrying along together the whole human presence, composed of body, heart, soul, and luminous intelligence.

Most of the short poems in this collection deal with longing and the desire to reunite with the Friend (Shams Tabriz), who was wrenched away from Rumi because of the envy of the others who feared the consummation of their friendship. Rumi was not a poet when Shams first met him and then took him away on weeklong periods of sobhet, mystical conversation and merging. In the distance of their separation, Rumi somehow turned into a poet writing profusely about their separation and his longing for his friend. These poems are records of kindred souls in a conversation, which at times read almost like two lovers being kept apart.

Tonight we’re getting love-messages.
For their sake we must not go to sleep.
The fragrance of your hair spreading through the streets
makes the perfumers wonder at such competition.

Seeing you heals me.
Not seeing you, I feel the walls closing.
I would not wish for anyone else
such absence.

From following these private hints, private longings, sometimes his poems can expand and turn into something universal as is shown here:

Two hands, two feet, two eyes, good,
as it should be, but no separation
of the Friend and your loving.

Any dividing there
makes other untrue distinctions like Jew,
and Christian and Muslim.

Don’t forget the nut, being so proud of the shell,
The body has its inward ways,

the five senses. They crack open,
and the Friend is revealed.

Crack open the Friend, you become
the All-One.

No matter how you read these poems, as the emanations of an intense longing for another or the cries of a soul for an echo in the silence of the night, they are somehow like seeds from the scoop, they grow in you, they seep into your being and infuse it with an awakening akin to seeing your first sunrise in a remote island when you are in complete peace with yourself and the world. That in essence the difference between a poem written by a Sufi and an award-winning poet: the former makes an effort to converse with your soul, the latter attempts to show you his brilliance.