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Persian Sonnets: A Translation of Rumi

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Mowlānā Jalāl al-Din Muhammad Rumi, also known simply as Rumi, was the preeminent Sufi mystic and poet. Born in 13th-century Persia, he composed a wide variety of poems about the themes of sacred love, beauty, and the eternal longing to be united with the Divine. In addition to the Masnavi, his revered six-volume poem, Rumi is most famous for his Divân-e Shams-e Tabrizi, which includes over 3200 ghazals.

The ghazal is a form of traditional Persian poetry that is often compared to the Western sonnet, due to its strict formalistic requirements. In the original Farsi, a ghazal comprises five to fifteen couplets, each ending with a refrain, which first appears at the end of both lines of the first couplet. The final couplet usually includes a reference to the poet in the third person, communicating more directly with the reader. Unlike sonnets, however, each couplet remains independent in meaning—a poem in itself—united to the others only in its form, rhyme, and meter. This sonnet from Divân-e Shams-e Tabrizi is widely considered Rumi’s final composition, addressed to his son while on his deathbed in 1273.

Go place your head on the pillow, leave me be

Go place your head on the pillow, leave me be,
Abandon me, the broken and afflicted night wanderer.
Alone, the waves of sorrow and I, from night to day;
If you wish, come forgive me; if you wish, go forsake me.
Escape from me, lest you fall into this misery:
Choose the route of health; abandon the path of pain.
Alone, the water of my eyes and I, crouched in sorrow’s corner,
Turning one hundred watermills with these tears.

My Lover, He murders me, with a heart of granite
While none dare warn: consider the blood debt.
Since the King of Beauty owes no loyalty,
Sallow with love, you wait and be loyal.
There’s a sickness other than dying without remedy,
So how should I say treat this sickness?
Last night I dreamt a sage in the alley of love;
With his hand, he beckoned me to his side.
If a dragon blocks the path, Love is the emerald
Whose brilliance will banish the dragon.

Enough! I am without my self, but if you think yourself skilled
Tell the history of ‘bū Ali[1]; take a lesson from ‘bū ‘Ala[2].

By Roxanna Haghighat ’15
With thanks to Leslie Dunton-Downer, a trustee of The Harvard Advocate, for reviewing the translation.


[1] Abū Ali Ibn-Sina (Avicenna, born 980-1037 AD) was an ancient Persian philosopher and physician of the Medieval era. Arguably the most influential figure of the Islamic Golden Age, he wrote almost 450 treatises on a wide range of subjects, including philosophy, theology, astronomy, alchemy, psychology, logic, physics, and poetry.

[2] Abul ‘Ala al-Ma‘arri (973-1058 AD) was a materialist philosopher and ardent skeptic, who rejected divine revelation and once said, “The world holds two classes of men—intelligent men without religion, and religious men without intelligence.”



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