Poem of the month

selected by David Underdown, who supplies the footnote

Who Makes These Changes?

by Rumi

Who makes these changes?
I shoot an arrow right.
It lands left.
I ride after a deer and find myself
chased by a hog.
I plot to get what I want
and end up in prison.
I dig pits to trap others
and fall in.

I should be suspicious
of what I want.

Rumi, the thirteenth-century Persian philosopher and mystic who founded the Whirling Dervishes, was also a poet. His lasting appeal, not just within oriental cultures but in the West, is founded on the accessibility of his verse and how it still speaks about the fundamental questions of human existence. This translation by the American scholar Coleman Barks is taken from the Penguin Classic edition of Rumi’s Selected Poems.