The Quiet One

Annōsō clam sophō loquēbar nocte,

“Sīs tū mystērium mihī dētegere.” 

Lēni, lēnī vōce loquēbātur tum,

“Vīsum’st, sed nōn loquēris umquam, Rūmī.”

Translation of Rūmī’s quatrain #1035, Foruzanfar, ed.; 

pg 26 in Houshmand’s Moon and Sun; 

quatrain #442 in Gamard’s The Quatrains of Rumi.

See blog entry for October 31, 2021 about Latin and Persian poetry. Note: from this

blog entry on, I will no longer use end-rhymes.

بـا پــیر خـــرد نــهفتــه می گفتــم دوش

کــز من ســخــن از ســر جهان مپوش

نرمــک نرمــک مرا همــی گفت به گوش

کین دیدنی است گفتنـی نیست خموش

bā pīr-e xerad nehofta mī goftam dūsh

kaz man soxan az ser-e jehān hīch mapūsh

narmak narmak marā hamī goft be gūsh

kīn dīdani ast goftanī nīst xamūsh 

With an old wise man, I was talking privately last night,

“From me talk of the world’s secrets don’t hide.”

Softly, softly to me he kept saying in my ear,

“It can be seen; it can’t be said, Rūmi.” 

Sufi poets seem to like to talk a lot about secrets. The truth is veiled or hidden or a treasure buried. Its whereabouts are a unknown. In this poem Rūmī tells us that the answer to these secrets is all around us. We just have to open our eyes. The catch is: we have no words to describe what we will experience. 

This is one thought about the poem. Another is that often Sufi poets tell us that one shouldn’t talk about these secrets. One should keep quiet about them. Why, I don’t know, but I do know that for several centuries Sufis were hanged as heretics and punished for openingly declaring what they believed.  This poem ends with the word xamūsh or khamūsh. Khamūsh means “silence” and is often used like our word “hush.” In this way, the last line could mean: “It can be seen, not discussed, shhh!” 

But the word also has another signification. It happens to be Rūmī’s pen name.  Pen names were used by Persian poets as a way of signing off, of claiming the poem to be theirs. Ironic, though, that one of the most prolific poets in the world chose “Hush” as his pen name! So, it is possible that Rūmī is talking to himself, reminding himself at the same time to be quiet and keep the secret.

Why so much ambiguity? The glib answer is that this is a poem. A better answer would be that Persian poetry of this antiquity was never written with punctuation and quotation marks. These were added by twentieth-century editors. Thus it is that these four lines are differently punctuated depending on the book you read. Here, I’ve chosen to make the last line the words of the sage. Most editors don’t see it that way, but I feel that, if xamūsh refers to Rūmī, the word is in the vocative and completes what the wise man says.

By the way, the word for this Persian-type of nom de plume is takhallos [تخلّص]. It comes from an Arabic root khalasa [خَلَصَ],which has a host of meanings, one of which is “to be finished.” It is perhaps this meaning that fits. The poet finishes the poem with his or her name. (By the way, for anyone who has spent time in predominantly Moslem countries, the root khalasa gives us a word that is heard everywhere: khalas. With this two-syllable word you can end conversations, secure business deals, lower the temperature of a heated argument, or storm off in a huff.) 

   

Here is a free translation of today’s rubā’ī in English:

I talked with my mentor alone last night:

“Don’t keep the world’s secrets from me.”

He kept whispering in my ear,

“Look around for them, Rūmī; 

there are no words. 

No words."