Poetry for me is a solace, an inspiration, and an escape. I long noticed that many people were not aware of the rich and ancient poetic tradition of the non-Western world that I had been exposed to. In March 2021, I began a Twitter account, “Song of the Reed” as a means of introducing these hidden treasures of Western civilization to the English-speaking world. In November 2022, I began slowly transferring my Twitter content to an Instagram account. Poems are provided in English and the original language when possible, with a brief description of the poet’s background. Shorter poems are simply shared as tweets, and longer poems are designed and formatted as an image.
A brief explanation on the meaning of “Song of the Reed:”
Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi (1207–1273), known simply as Rumi, was a Persian Sufi poet and is arguably one of the most widely-read poets in history. His famous mystical poem, the Mathnawi, begins,
Listen to the song of the reed,
How it sings of the pain of separation:
"Ever since I was taken from my reed bed
My woeful song has caused men and women to weep.”*
The sound of the reed flute imparts the pain of separation and longing for the beloved. Its sound represents the abiding void humans feel because of their separation from the Source, which is the source of all love, human and divine.
It is also “the fire of love that brings music to the reed.” Thus, the sound of a flute is not only a lament, but can also be a celebration of the ecstasy one feels when united with the beloved.
In Sufi literature, the beloved is the divine and not a person, but that ambiguity is what makes their writings so relatable, universal, and timeless. In their poetry, the physical and the metaphysical, the body and the spirit are not seen as distinct entities, but they are intertwined, and in this way, their poetry addresses both dimensions of our existence.
The metaphor of the song of the reed is a masterful way to begin a work of poetry, because poetry speaks to our states of pain and elation, sadness and joy, separation and union—in the physical and the spiritual sense. Like the song of the reed, poetry gives voice to the complexity of the human condition in a raw and honest way, better than any other form of writing can.
This personal project is a celebration of those many facets of the human experience, captured in verse. Below are a few select poems I have shared.
