Abram:

Hello, I'm Abram Van Engen.

Joanne:

And IÕm Joanne Diaz.

Abram:

And this is Poetry For All.

Joanne:

And today weÕre delighted to welcome Haleh Liza Gafori. Haleh Liza Gafori has translated a beautiful collection of poems by Rumi titled *Gold,* which was just published last year by New York Review of Books Press. And today she is going to guide us through Rumi's poem that begins with the first line ÒColorless, Nameless, Free.Ó Haleh, would you be willing to read this poem for us?

Haleh:

Of course I'm happy to. Here is ghazal number 1,759. 

[reads original poem in Persian]
 
Abram:

And now can you give us a sense of what you've done with the translation ÒColorless, 
Nameless, FreeÓ?

Haleh: Sure, sure, and I will say to my Persian friends who might be listening: I know I have a little bit of a Jersey accent. [laughter] I was born here, grew up in Jersey. Okay, so here is the translation. Now, one thing I just want to say is that this is a conversation. So, you will hear me sort of alter voice slightly, perhaps. You'll be able to sense the conversation.

Colorless, nameless, freeÑ
thatÕs what I am.
				When will I see myself as I am?

Put mystery in the middle.

				Where is the middle in the middle I am?

				And this silver-tongued stream in meÑ
				when will it grow still enough to know 
				the streaming stillness I am?

The ocean I am drowned in the ocean I amÑ
shoreless, boundless, wonderful.

DonÕt look for me in this world or that world.
Both worlds are lost in the world I amÑ

a luminous void beyond profit and loss.
Wonder abounds beyond fear of loss
and lust for gain.

				My soul, you are my true eyes.

What are the eyes in the invisible visible I am?

				Then what do I call you?
Silence.
Words canÕt name what I am.

				Then praise the wordless speaker I am.
				I raced through emptiness, footless like the moon.
				Praise the footless runner I am!

Why are you runningÑto reach me?
Settle in the placeless place I am.
Settle in the nowhere everywhere I am.

The moment I saw Shams of Tabriz,
I saw the supreme sea, treasure, 
and gold mine I am.

Joanne:

Aw, that was great. [laughter] Oh, my face is already hurting. I just can't stop smiling. [laughter] ItÕs so beautiful. It makes me so happy to hear this poem in the original and in your amazing translation. And to hear you perform it with such exuberance, you know? And that's what brings me to Rumi. And, of course, millions of others who love him so much. I don't even know where to begin. 

Abram:

Let's start with who R?m? was.

Haleh:
Well, Rumi, first of all, is Jal?l al-D?n Mu?ammad ibn Husayn Balkh?, A.K.A. Mawl?n?, which is what we call him across the Middle East, or Mevl‰n‰ in Turkey. This word Mawl?n?/Mevl‰n‰ means our master, our sage. So, he was very revered in his lifetime and for the last 800 years. He was born in 1207. So, heÕs had fans for a long time. And, R?m? is a name that came after, actually, his death. And it means from R?m, which is Anatolia, which is, of course, where present day Turkey is and where he spent much of his life. But he was actually born in either Balkh or Vakhsh, which is present day Afghanistan. And since he was writing 90, probably 98, percent of his poetry in Persian, and there were no national borders back then, he's very clearly a Persian poet. They say that poets belong to languages, not to nations. And there weren't nation-states back then anyway. But a lot of nations claim him.

Joanne:

And what was it like for you to translate this and other poems in this collection?

Haleh: 

It was an incredibly engaging process. I mean it kind of sucked me in and I really thoroughly enjoy it. You know, he says eat my poems like Egyptian bread. And I feel that when you translate you must eat the poems and, as I've said before, wake with the poems, ride the train with the poems, you know, hike with the poems. And let the sort of messages and images of the poems work though you. You know, I also spent a lot of time reading the poems aloud with my mother. That's been an incredible process. Her grandmother was a story teller, so some of the backstories that are in R?m?'s poems or Mawl?n?Õs poems, she heard as a child. So, it's kind of this intergenerational passing. And it felt like some kind of strange homecoming. It felt incredibly nourishing to be with these poems. I was spending a lot of time working on the book ÒGoldÓ during the pandemic. And I felt very lucky to have this sort of, what he often names, the shoreless ocean. And I did feel like that, you know? The shoreless ocean being this kind of soul energy or this kind of capacious love, you know? This love, what is it doing to us? ItÕs untying knots, when he says [reads line in Persian]. ÒAt the doorway to emptiness, / all knots come loose.Ó This emptiness being what? The mystical Persian and Eastern, the Buddhist speak of it, too. This emptiness, this space beyond narrative, beyond words, beyond the spinning chatter in the mind, when we achieve some kind of silence, perhaps, through a meditative practice. Anyway, needing that and feeling knots untied. It's been a really great experience!

Joanne:

Absolutely!

Abram: 

If you have to live with a poet for a really long time to translate them, this seems like a pretty good one to live with. [laughter]

Haleh:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Abram:

You mention this word ÒghazalÓ that you pass back and forth with your mother and, of course, this is a ghazal. Can you begin to explain to our listeners, what is that? What kind of poem is that? What's its form, what's its nature, where does it come from, what's it doing?

Haleh:

Yeah, a ghazal is a string of couplets, and there is a refrain. So, at the end of each couplet, we have a repeated word or phrase. In this one, it's Òmanam.Ó So, when I recited the Persian, you may have noticed that. The first couplet will repeat the word or phrase at the end of each line, so itÕs [reads lines in Persian]. Right? So we have that ÒA-A.Ó Then, we have ÒB-A,Ó ÒC-A,Ó ÒD-A.Ó So, then you know the next line is [reads lines in Persian]. There it is again. [reads another line in Persian]. There it is again. So, that's sort of the form. And the idea is that each of these couplets are complete entities within themselves. And, in other words, you could pluck one of these couplets out and it could be a little poem. You could pluck three out, and it could be a poem. And there's a leaping quality between couplets. So, we might be talking about, in one poem, for instance, the repeating word is Òlaughter.Ó And we might look at laughter from all these different angles, and all these different dimensions of laughter. And they're not related, it's not linear, it's not a narrative. It's just, we're gonna leap around. And, you know, ÒghazalÓ is etymologically related to ÒgazelleÓ which leaps, so thereÕs that link.

Joanne:

I believe it was Ralph Waldo Emerson, when he first encountered this poetic form he criticized it for the very thing that you're describing. Saying Òit doesn't connect,Ó Òit's not cohesive.Ó I think he might have described it as separate pearls on one necklace, right?

Haleh:

Yeah, yes.

Joanne:

But, actually, separate pearls on a necklace turn out to be beautiful. 

Haleh:

Yes, yes.

Joanne:

When you read the poem to us, you prepared us by saying, you know, Òyou're gonna hear my voice shift a bit because there's a dialogue happening here.Ó Could you say more about that dialogue that's unfolding in this poem?

Haleh:

This poem seems to be very clearly to be a conversation between soul and self. So, in Persian, there's this word, and Arabic, thereÕs a word Ònafs.Ó Nafs is sometimes equated with the ego that we want to shed. But, actually, nafs is a sort of spectrum from the constricted, stifled ego to the expansive soul. This, for the Sufi mystics, really expanding beyond the egoic self. Nafs al-ammarah, itÕs called. So, it's a specific type of nafs. It's the stifled nafs. This is one of the goals of Sufi mysticism, is to move from greed to generosity. And so, this poem is a discussion between the soul and the self. And the soul begins by saying Òcolorless, nameless, free, that's what I am.Ó Now, this namelessness thing was really important to R?m?. At the end of the ghazals, the typical thing to do is to address yourself. The poet will say ÒHafez,Ó blah blah blah, or ÒAtar,Ó blah blah blah. It's also a way of signing the poem. But R?m? never put his own name, he put Shams of Tabr?z?, or he put kh?mosh, which means silence, or he put ??l?? al-D?n, one of his other friends. So, the idea was he wanted to actually experience the state of namelessness. Because, also, he was very famous. You know, he was a famous preacher before he became a poet. And so, he wanted to sort of put that aside around the age of 38, when Shams of Tabr?z? came into his life. And said, ÒHey, come with me.Ó R?m? thought, let me walk this talk, now. Let me put this big turban, which was a sign of prestige, and this robe aside, and the fame aside. And he stopped preaching. He passed that baton on and went into these sam?, deep listening gatherings, and that's when he started to write poetry. Specifically, when Shams left town. His first ghazals were love letters to Shams, calling him back. So, this throwing dogma to the side and embracing bewilderment, embracing the question mark, is very central to this philosophy. ÒPut mystery in the middle,Ó carries the philosophy of this Sufism.

Joanne:

What youÕre saying really helps me understand how Sufism informs his poetics and his whole way of being. And, as I hear you talking, thereÕs one line, that each time I've read your translation of this poem, this passage really stays with me. ÒDonÕt look for me in this world or that world. / Both worlds are lost in the world I amÑ// a luminous void beyond profit and loss. / Wonder abounds beyond fear of loss and lust for gain.Ó I know IÕm not the first person to say this probably, but I can't help but think of Walt Whitman, right? ÒIf you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. //  You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, / But I shall be good help to you nevertheless, / And filter and fiber your blood.Ó You know?

Haleh:

So beautiful, yes.

Joanne:

And, I would love those two guys to have a conversation together.

Haleh:

Oh, me too. They would have been great friends. Great friends!

Joanne:

Yeah, because of that openness and that desire for connection, for love, beyond the limits that we often impose in this world, right?

Haleh:

Yes, yes. I grew up hearing my father recite this poetry while we lived in Fort Lee, New Jersey. And, we lived in an apartment building that was looking out on the Hudson River. And, you know, one of the first heartbreaks of my life was knowing how polluted this river was. You know, 1.3 [million] pounds of PCBs were dumped into this river. Why? Because of profit and the bottom line. Because it was more expensive to be responsible and, you know, dispose of these wastes in a responsible manner. So, seeing ourselves as interconnected, seeing ourselves as part of a whole, and caring for each other. This is so central to mysticism.

Abram:

There's the content of this poetry, which is calling us to a kind of mysticism and expressing it in a certain kind of way. But then, you, as a translator, also have to carry over some of the music of the poetry. So, when I look at these lines that we've just been talking about. For example, I'm hearing the ÒLÓs come back, right? ÒLost, luminous, lost, lost, lust.Ó I'm hearing a kind of rhythm and repetition. ÒBoth worlds are lost in the world I am, // a luminous void beyond profit and loss. / Wonder abounds beyond fear of loss and lust for gain.Ó I mean, they're beautiful lines. And so, I wonder how you navigate as a translator. Are you carrying over a certain music that you hear, are you carrying over alliteration that you hear, are you carrying over repetition? What are you trying to do to make the music speak the mysticism?

Haleh:

Sometimes, it is possible to recreate or mimic the wordplay in the translation. For instance, if we look at this couplet, [reads line in Persian]. You can hear the words rav?n, s‰ken, and s‰ken-e rav?n. So, rav?n means flowing, streaming, like a river. It also means fluent or silver tongued, which, of course, R?m? was, very eloquent, and very talkative. And s‰ken means quiet, still. So, in the couplet, he's using these words in different places, of course, in the sentences. And so, here it is in English, ÓAnd this silver-tongued stream in meÑ / when will it grow still enough to know / the streaming stillness I am?Ó So, you hear the double stream, streaming, and still stillness. 

Abram:

One of the things that struck me from what you were saying earlier about the namelessness of the soul and trying to get away from ego is, if this is a conversation between soul and self, there are all these moments when the self keeps trying to pin down the soul, right? ÒMy soul, you are my true eyes.Ó And then the soul responds, ÒWhat are eyes in the invisible visible I am?Ó And then the self says, okay, fine, ÒThen what do I call you?Ó And the soul says, ÒSilence. / Words can't name what I am.Ó You know, sometimes we talk about poets knowing the limits of language more than almost any other kind of user of language because they work with words as their medium, and they know the limits of those words and what they cannot capture. Then, you get a poet like R?m? who's especially dwelling in that reality because of the sort of mystical experience. And, what do we get but a whole bunch of words that are essentially generated by the desire to name and experience a kind of silence. 

Haleh:

Yeah, he's trying to usher us into wordlessness with words, right? He's using words to usher us into wordlessness. That's very true, very true. And that's one of the reasons he ends so many of his poems with kh?mosh, which means basically turn off, it means turn it off. Turn off the tongue, turn off the mind, silence.

Joanne:

Silence, yes, opening, yes, but also movement and connection. So, it feels like itÕs a Òboth and,Ó where in some poems itÕs turn off, you know, the ego, turn off all of the ways that you want to limit yourself. But elsewhere, he's asking for connection, engagement, whirling action, right? And so I'm thinking of whirling dervishes, of course, and sam? which, of course, Shams of Tabr?z introduced him to. It wasn't a part of his life until midlife. And that became a part of his poetic practice and is a tradition that continues to this day, right? Whirling dervishes, they are considered by UNESCO to be culturally significant practice. And, if you watch the dance of the whirling dervish, one hand is facing down toward Earth, the other is facing up toward Heaven, right? And that movement, of just the idea of the circle, of the movement of the body, just going and going, and that that can get you into a meditative state. So, yes to silence, but also yes to movement and thinking about the body. How you think about all that?

Haleh:

Yes, well I think that movement is, in a way, a demanding meditative practice, only in the sense that it involves motor coordination, a movement, a repetitive movement. And it requires a focus. When I've successfully whirled, meaning for longer than five minutes, it's when I get very, very peaceful. You drop into this place and then you can whirl for hours. It asks you, it invites you, into silence. You can only really do it if you sort of calm down, it seems to me, for that long. He then became, what he would say, a conduit, and he started to hear the booming voice of the heavens, the roar of fate, the ruckus the muse makes. You know, in this state of whirling and the silent mind, the poetry started coming through and sometimes he was spontaneously composing while whirling.

Abram:

You spoke earlier about how a lot of poets in a ghazal would put their own name at the very end and R?m? does not do that, instead he puts somebody else's name. But what is the function of that last stanza, and how does it work? We still get the repetition, we still get the refrain, we still end the whole poem on ÒI amÓ but we seem to shift. If we have this dialogue between soul and self, then suddenly at the very end, we get this, ÒThe moment I saw Shams of Tabriz, / I saw the supreme sea, treasure, / and gold mine I am.Ó

Haleh:

This is the moment when soul and self are coming together. And this is the moment of integration where I am all of these things, and I will, you know, slip back and forth between, you know, soul and ego while hopefully moving towards soul more and more and more, becoming more and more expansive as my life goes on. In this moment of allowing ourselves both to be the idiosyncratic self that we are and the soul energy, which is the unified interconnected energy that we are. In this moment when we see both and we allow one to inform the other and we allow soul energy to come into the self and really sort of support it, we then have access to the goldmine within us.

Joanne:

And that Shams of Tabr?z?, again, that friendship that they had and the ways that Shams challenged R?m? to re-see the world in a whole other way. I love that he acknowledges that connection, and that debt, and just how transformative that was for him. So, I love how the poem reaches beyond just one speaker, you know, and it really relies on Shams being there at the conclusion of the poem. That's beautiful. 

Haleh:

Yes, yes, and Shams was in a way his portal to the divine. You know, and I think Dante, Beatrice was a kind of window into the divine for Dante. But this kind of love between two human beings sometimes opens us to the divine energy. And when that person is so connected to something that we feel is so important to us, it's so beautiful and expansive. It's, like, ÒYou are the doorway to the sun,Ó he tells Shams. You are my portal to revelation. So the friend there, the human friend, bringing us to the divine is really important. 

There is a line in there that I think is worth mentioning too, since we were looking at some of the lines. When the soul says, as Abram, you mentioned, ÒWords canÕt name what I am.Ó And then the self comes back and says, ÒThen praise the wordless speaker I am.Ó You know, it's kind of like, I got this, okay, okay, I get it. And then it says, oh, and also, ÒPraise the footless runner I am!Ó ÒI've raced through emptiness, footless like the moon.Ó You know, this is so funny. I think there's such a glimmer of comedy there, and adorableness. The self, just sort of wanting to say, oh, look at me, look at what I've accomplished. And then the soul answers, ÒWhy are you runningÑto reach me?Ó Nah, settle. ÒSettle in the placeless place I am. Settle in the nowhere everywhere I am.Ó

Abram:

I love that. I love that back and forth, and also just the sense that humor, too, can be a part of mysticism.  Because sometimes we think of mysticism as waiting and pondering and significant, and you have to enter into the spirit of it, and so on. And here, you get this humorous, oh, IÕm racing without feet to meet you. And this other why are you even running? Just settle down, settle down. 

Haleh:

Yeah, settle down. And, actually, you bring up a very important point regarding laughter, because there are poems dedicated to laughter. And laughter is it, we know we've finally got this when we're laughing, I think. You know, because that's when the knots have untied. 

Abram:

With all that we've learned, would you be willing to read this poem for us once again?

Haleh:

Here is Ghazal number 1,759 by Mawl?n? R?m?: 

[reads poem in Persian]. 

Okay, and the English.

Colorless, nameless, freeÑ
thatÕs what I am.
				When will I see myself as I am?

Put mystery in the middle.

				Where is the middle in the middle I am?

				And this silver-tongued stream in meÑ
				when will it grow still enough to know 
				the streaming stillness I am?

The ocean I am drowned in the ocean I amÑ
shoreless, boundless, wonderful.

DonÕt look for me in this world or that world.
Both worlds are lost in the world I amÑ

a luminous void beyond profit and loss.
Wonder abounds beyond fear of loss
and lust for gain.

				My soul, you are my true eyes.

What are the eyes in the invisible visible I am?

				Then what do I call you?
Silence.
Words canÕt name what I am.

				Then praise the wordless speaker I am.
				I raced through emptiness, footless like the moon.
				Praise the footless runner I am!

Why are you runningÑto reach me?
Settle in the placeless place I am.
Settle in the nowhere everywhere I am.

The moment I saw Shams of Tabriz,
I saw the supreme sea, treasure, 
and gold mine I am.

Joanne:

Amazing, yeah.

Abram:

So good.

Joanne:

Thank you, Haleh, for joining us today.

Haleh:

My pleasure. Thank you so much for your interest in this, and I enjoyed myself very much.

Abram:

To learn more about R?m?, you can visit our website at poetryforall.fireside.fm, and you can find Haleh Liza GaforiÕs translations of R?m?'s poems into English in ÒGold,Ó published by the New York Review of Books, and you can visit her website at halehliza.com.

Joanne:

And please remember to subscribe to Poetry For All wherever you get your podcasts, and be 
sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Abram:

Thank you for listening.