Wednesday, June 16, 2010

(not) A New Life

This is a poem I wrote during a vocab class... we had just read a poem about Ibrahim, a Persian king who gave up his throne. The assignment was to write a similar poem that included a few of the given words. The original poem was A New Life by the Persian poet Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks. 


On the rooftop one special day
The Persian king half-asleep lay

The ecstatic spinning had been a nice trip
But the dizziness had made him bite his lower lip.

Happy to be back from Qaf
That was a rollercoaster he really wanted off


At first, the throne he had wanted to abdicate
But now he was glad that for a mind change it wasn't too late

To the menace of the drum he preferred the cello
Because those sounds were so much more mellow

For though the spinning had been fun
It was only illusory and now it was done

And so the king resumed his throne
No transformation; the robe and beard he'd keep as his own

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