Persian Poets [Hardcover]

The Middle Ages saw an extraordinary flowering of Persian poetry. Though translations began appearing in Europe in the nineteenth century, these remarkable poets--Omar Khayyam, Rumi, Saadi, Sanai, Attar, Hafiz, and Jami--are still being discovered in the West.

The great medieval Persian poets owe much to the mystical Sufi tradition within Islam, which understands life as a journey in search of enlightenment, and, like their European contemporaries, they combine religious and secular themes. While celebrating the beauty of the world in poems about love, wine, and poetry itself, or telling humorous anecdotes of everyday life, they use these subjects to symbolize deeper concerns with wisdom, mortality, salvation, and the quest for God.Foreword

OMAR
The Ruba’iyat

SANAI
The Blind Men and the Elephant
FromTheWalled Garden of Truth
The Wild Rose of Praise
EnergeticWork
Earthworm Guidance
The Puzzle
The Time Needed

ATTAR
Listening to the Reed Flute
Street-Sweeper
Looking for Your Own Face
FromBird Parliament

RUMI
Who SaysWords with My Mouth?
A Community of the Spirit
The Reed Flute’s Song
Sanai
A Just-Finishing Candle
Only Breath
Quatrains (‘Today, like every other . . .’)
The Shape of My Tongue
Quatrains (‘The Friend comes . . .’)
Tending Two Shops
Constant Conversation
Bonfire at Midnight
Quatrains (‘When I am with you . . .’)
Someone Digging in the Ground
Who Makes These Changes?
Chickpea to Cook
The Mouse and the Camel
Quatrains (‘A craftsman pulled . . .’)
New Moon, Hilal
The Bird of My Heart
Die Now
So Drunk am I
Aiming at Brotherhood
The Assembly is Like a Lamp
Talking in the Night
Talking through the Door
The Parrot of Bagdad
Remembered Music
The True Sufi
Reality and Appearance
The Unseen Power