TEACHERS

                                  
My academic training, at Berkeley and Chapel Hill, was in American and twentieth-century literature. I had never even heard Rumi's name until 1976, when Robert Bly handed me a copy of A. J. Arberry's translations, saying, "These poems need to be released from their cages." How any translator chooses to work on one poet, and no on others, is a mysterious thing. Some attunement must be there. I felt drawn immediately to the spaciousness and longing in Rumi's poetry. I began to explore this new world, rephrasing Arberry's English. I sent some of the early attempts to a friend who was teaching law at Rutgers-Camden. He, inexplicably, read them to his class. A young law student came up afterward, asked him for my address, and started writing, urging me to come meet his teacher in Philadelphia. When I finally did walk into the room where the Sri Lankan saint Bawa Muhaiyaddeen sat on his bed talking to a small group, I realized that I had met the man in a dream the year before. I can't explain such an event, nor can I deny that it did happen. Bawa told me to continue with the Rumi work; "It has to be done." But, he cautioned, "If you work on the words of a gnani, you must become a gnani," a master. I did not become one of those, but for nine years, for four or five intervals during each year, I was in the presence of one.

Rumi says,
          Mind does its fine-tuning hair-splitting,
          but no craft or art begins
          or can continue without a master
          giving wisdom into it.

I would have little notion of what Rumi's poetry is about or what it came out of if I were not connected to this sufi sheikh. Though it's not necessary to use the word sufi, the work Bawa did and does with me is beyond religion. "Love is the religion, and the universe is the book." Working on Rumi's poetry deepens the inner companionship. My apprenticeship continues, and whatever else they are, these versions or translations or renderings or imitations are homage to a teacher. And yet not as a follower, more as a friend. in some way I am very grateful for, these poems feel as if they come as part of a continuing conversation rather than as language unilaterally produced. I once asked Bawa if what I saw in his eyes could someday come up behind my eyes and look out. He began to talk about the subtle relationship between a teacher and the community, "Not until the I becomes we."

There was a childhood joke that I did not get until recently. At age six I was a geography freak. I memorized all the capitals of all the countries in the 1943 Rand McNally Atlas. I grew up on the campus of a boys' school in Chattanooga, and the teachers were continually testing this odd expertise. "Bulgaria!" someone would call out across the quadrangle. "Sophia!" I would answer. I couldn't be stumped, until the ecstatic trickster, James Pennington, went down in his basement Latin classroom and came up with a country that had no capital, on his map at least: Cappadocia. The look on my face, what I didn't know, named me. From then on I was called "Cappadocia," or "Capp." I almost fell down a few years ago when I remembered the nickname and realized that the central city of that Anatolian area was Iconium, now Konya, where Rumi lived and is buried. Rumi means "the one from Roman Anatolia." I don't mean to claim a special relationship with Rumi. Mevlana's poetry has been a large part of my life for twenty years. It has brought many friends and wonderful opportunities. But a poet of such astonishing range and depth needs many translators and interpreters. Mystical poetry tries to reveal the apple orchard within the mist of language (Rumi's image). I hope these translations do not thicken that fog; I hope they burn it off! I do love the apples that Rumi loves. The synchronicities that introduced us continue to delight and exfoliate in wonderful ways. This work has involved a kind of emptying out, a surrender (despite the strutting of personal incidents here). That's how the collaboration has felt. It's also a form of healing, a way to play and praise, and an unfolding friendship with a teacher. or just say that all these poems are love poems. Of course, they are, self to deep self, plural to singular, Coleman to Bawa, Rumi to Shams, I to you, Lover-beloved-love, ecstatic universes in synchrony. Rumi is God's funny family on a big open radio line.

-- Coleman Barks