Robert Southwick Richmond

Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī (جلال‌الدین محمد رومی)

 

Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī (جلال‌الدین محمد رومی),

died December 17th, 1273

 

Upon his death, Jalāl ad-Dīn Rūmī,

(Whose poems never said a lot to me)

I find I must resort to rubáiyát

Upon this winter day, so cold and gloomy.

 

The scansions of the late Edward FitzGerald

(Omar Khayyám\'s perhaps unlikely herald)

Preserve the form of ancient Persian verse

In which the poet, his warm heart laid bare held

 

The words a student sets upon her dresser,

(With Leonard Cohen and Gibran), and, bless her,

Rūmī in several dubious translations,

By poets rarely greater, mostly lesser.