You wake the dead to life

Written by Rumi and Haleh Liza Gafori

Read by Pádraig Ó Tuama

You wake the dead to life,
you fountain of grace,
you fire in thickets of tangled thought.

Today you arrived beaming with laughter—
that swinging key that unlocks prison doors.

You are hope’s beating heart.
You are a doorway to the sun.
You are the one I seek and the one who seeks me.
Beginning and end.

You greet need with generous hands.
You flood us with spirit,

rising from the heart,
lifting thought.

Rare one, you reveal the pleasure
of wisdom and practice.

Beyond these, what is there
but excuses and deceit?

We lust after the afterlife.
We stew over trinkets.
We stage battles between black and white.
Our ears are plugged with twisted delusions.

You carry the cure.

Silence!
I’m in a hurry. Leave the paper. Break the pen.
The cupbearer is here, jug in hand.

Meet us in the land of insight,
camped under ecstasy’s flag.

“You wake the dead to life” from GOLD by Rumi, translated by Haleh Liza Gafori. Used by permission of New York Review Books.

Contributors

Rumi was a 13th-century Muslim mystic and poet. He left behind a vast body of lyric poetry, metaphysical writings, lectures, and letters, which have influenced Persian, Urdu, and Turkish literature across the centuries.

Haleh Liza Gafori is a translator, vocalist, poet, and educator of Persian descent born in New York City. She has sung and translated the poetry of various Persian poets for well over a decade. She is the translator of GOLD (New York Review of Books / NYRB Classics 2022), translations of poems by Rumi, the 13th-century Muslim mystic and poet. Gafori has taught classes at Dartmouth University, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, Taos Poetry Festival, and the Omega Institute.