It is for every generation to retranslate the classics anew. For example, Molana Jalal al-Din Rumi is one such classic writer. English readers rediscovered him in a big way when Coleman Barks took Robert Bly's advice and reworked Rumi's work from early translators ( JW Redhouse, AJ Arberry, RA Nicholson, at al) of yore.

Comes now a new Rumi translator for an already receptive, more precisely attuned generation. Rather than the longer texts which Coleman made popular, she hones in on his quatrains (ruba'iyat). ( Coleman Barks' renditions of Rumi's rubai'yat are available as "Birdsong" and "Unseen Rain." ) Classical Persian rubai often follow a lovely pattern of thought familiar also in classical Eastasian quatrains. The first line presents a theme ... the second elaborates it ... the third takes off in a different direction ... the fourth brings it all back home, like a cat landing on all four feet. For example ----

Two daughters of a silk merchant live in Kyoto.
The elder is twenty; the younger, eighteen.
A soldier may kill with his sword,
But these girls slay men with their eyes.

Selecting 250 rubai for us, Zara Houshmand brings us Rumi in his astonishing range of skill, his unquenchable fountain imagery, his depths of insight into the human longing to merge with the divine. His genius resists doctrinal categorization, however she arranges the poems in a sequence of fifteen groups that ground us in his lived world.

Rhymed in the original, she lets the music of Rumi's gift speak for itself.

As long as I live, this is my work, my trade.
My calm, my peace, my companion in grief.
I'm no hunter but I live to stalk this prey.
This is what fills my day, my destiny.

Here is uplifting, penetrative music combining thought and image as well as sound, as one —

Each part of me proclaims my love for her,
Each scrap of me, a tongue that speaks her name.
I'm the lute in her arms, the flute at her lips,
And my cries arise from her fingertips.

I read through the book once, like a swimmer immersing in a lively, buoyant ocean. The second time, I marked up my copy with notes to myself. The third time, I could hear Rumi singing with a voice quieter than silence and louder than lightning.

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A shout-out to Kathleen Burch for designing such a treasurable reading device of a book. ( )