The Universal Language Is Authentic Insight
I was given a wonderful book for my birthday last week by my dear friends Pouria and Jenna Montazeri. Love’s Alchemy: Poems from the Sufi Tradition, translated by David and Sabrineh Fideler, is “a comprehensive Collection of Sufi poems by Rumi, Hafiz, and many others.”
Finding myself unable to sleep tonight, as is often the case in the weeks leading up to the Nashville Film Festival, I decided to take some of the book’s poems in, and was immediately impacted by their simplicity, beauty and timelessness.
The third poem in the book is the great Rumi’s poem “The Same Language,” with its wonderful line:
The universal language is authentic insight.
To be one in heart is surely superior
to only speaking the same words.
I wish I had that poem several months ago when Nashville was in the throes of an “English-only” debate, but that would have only wrongly commandeered a poem that speaks of so much more. It’s just as appropriate in the confines of the home as it is within the Turkish border.
I realize quickly these are not poems to be paged through quickly, but savored slowly. A few pages later, I’m slowed to a crawl by the Hafiz poem, “The Glow of Your Presence.” It’s a short one, so I hope David and Sabrineh Fideler don’t mind me quoting it in its entirety.
Where have you taken your sweet song?
Come back and play me a tune.
I never really cared for the things of the world.
It was the glow of your presence
that filled it with beauty.
It’s how I’ve always felt about the music I create, and expresses the words I’ve been searching for to explain where that music has gone for the last couple of years. I really haven’t truly written and performed for a couple of years now. Perhaps this is my new prayer.
So when it’s late at night, and you’re reading poetry, and you come across something like that, what do you do? You need to tell somebody, and there’s no one to call. So you post a blog, which among its many uses, is still good for doing what it did originally — providing a place to share your thoughts.
April 9th, 2009 at 10:30 am
What a lovely thing to find on a night with no sleep. I am delighted that the poetry is speaking to you in such an impactful way- even though it is a translation. I have often found such lovely gems when I open most any Persian poetry volume. Thanks for sharing!