Water

Water is a new selection of poems by the Persian mystic Rumi, translated into English by Haleh Liza Gafori. Gafori is a poet and musician, and the book follows her earlier Rumi collection, Gold.

The poems draw on Rumi's lyric work and pair worldly wit with a call toward the spiritual. They ask the reader to look for the divine both inside and outside the self. They also question the hunger for possessions, fame and fortune, and the fear of emptiness behind it.

Nature runs through the collection. Rumi marvels at the size and wonder of the natural world and warns of the damage that greed and the hunt for power do to people and to the earth. The imagery is vivid, and the poems urge the reader to wake from oblivion and give way to the transformative power of Love.

The selection moves between forms, from sequences and litanies to very short epigrams. Gafori's English is contemporary and direct, and it keeps the sound of the original Farsi. The book suits readers new to Rumi as well as those who already know his poetry.