moon flowers

A thousand brilliant beauties filled the garden;

There were violets and musk-scented roses.

The stream was not those drops that trickled slow,

A mere excuse: He was himself the flow.

#660: From Rumi's Kolliyaat-e Shams-e Tabrizi

Search word: moon

Besides wine, moon is a word Rumi refers to most often. This morning the sun is already high in the sky as I worked during the night and have slept in to compensate. I completed my tax return to the light of the moon!

The final version of the translation above no longer contains the keyword moon which appears in the original translation below:

A thousand moon-flowers filled the garden;
There were violets and musk-scented roses.
The stream was not those drops that trickled slow,
A mere excuse. He was himself the flow.

I would guess that the Persian is literally "moon-flowers" but that this is a common metaphor that can be rendered "brilliant beauties". I would guess that, in the garden of their relationship (both before and after Shams' mysterious disappearance), Rumi experienced insight after insight, like pearls of wisdom on a thread of days and hours and minutes and seconds. The moon is the light of insight, the light associated with the night and its dreams, when subjectivity holds sway. Shams, Rumi's beloved and mystical "other", was the source of these insights. He was - and because he is eternal, he is - the source of insight, of those very moon-flowers that excite the inner senses. Right now, I name him Rumi for that is the name by which he appears to me. In a moment, I might name him by my cat's name when she nuzzles up for a scratch behind the ears. He might even appear as my arch-enemy who forced me to complete that wretched tax return in the middle of the night.

To keep my courage up, I drank a small glass of wine as I worked on those tax papers and, this morning, I can but hold up a metaphoric version of that glass and write: I'll drink to that!