Gold by Rumi is full of gentle commands and reminders. It is also very drunk.
This book (quite small compared even to the other poetry books in this series) is made up of poems translated from Farsi by Haleh Liza Gafori. Most of the poems are half a page worth of couplets, although the longer ones just barely reach two pages. The shortest are just two lines.
I am a very big proponent of finding joy in the little things (my personal favorite is finding one bird or squirrel and just watching them awhile). These poems capture the feeling of just existing in ecstasy. Some of them have a tipsy feeling, as if Rumi is a friend guiding you around a botanical garden saying, "Look! A flower." Others feel more like being pulled into a dance. All of them are so suffused with love and joy that it's hard not to smile as you read them.
I wasn't being metaphorical about Gold's drunkenness. Whole poems are devoted to the idea you can be drunk on love. One of my favorites even starts with drunkenness:
You, leading the caravan, look at your camels,
head to tail, all of them, drunk. (20)
Over and over again do the poems proclaim a newfound drunkenness. They sip from a cup filled with love's wine, drink with friends at taverns, and they drink and drink and drink until their own blood is wine. It makes one wonder where they're getting all this wine.
In Rumi's case, it comes from Shams. Named specifically at the end of many poems, Shams was Rumi's muse. Prior to their first meeting, Rumi was a renowned preacher with a large following who was growing bored of the fame. Shams was already on the fringes of religious society and was bored of this as well. They met in a bazaar where Rumi "walked off with the dervish, his 'doorway to the sun'" (viii).
My only regret with this text is that I did not read it aloud. The texts jump around like a gazelle (for which the form is named (ix)). They pause for a moment before leaping off into the next cup of wine. These poems are beautiful and ecstatic. If you get the chance, read them to your friends, pour out some of your love into their cup.
Rumi. Gold. Translated by Haleh Liza Gafori. NY: New York Review of Books, 2022. Koller-Collins Collection PK6481.D6 E5 2022
