Riotous

In the darkness and cold of winter, our photographer has stayed indoors and instead passed on a snatch of verse from her colleague Christiane:

„Und glaube ja nicht,
dass der Garten im Winter
seine Ekstase verliert.
Er ist still.
Aber die Wurzeln sind aufrührerisch
ganz tief da unten.“

The attributed author is the Afghan-born, Persian-language poet Rumi (1207 - 1273, full name Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī). I wanted to offer you the original Persian, but it seems this will prove unfindable. Rumi's mystical love poetry has been heavily quarried by transcendentalists for non-scholarly "best of" collections, but the translations are neither referenced nor faithful (Naficy).

The writer of the verse above is in fact the American poet Coleman Barks (1937 - ), who neither speaks nor reads Persian. Rumi inspired Barks. The collections in German bookshops sold under the Rumi "inspirational" brand are apparently translations of Barks's English, not of Rumi's Persian (Weidner). So here's the original: “And don't think the garden loses its ecstasy in winter. It's quiet, but the roots are down there riotous.”