The Love Metaphor poetic review by Sadaf Munshi

The Love Metaphor is a beautiful interplay of two poems, composed centuries apart, by two very famous poets — a sonnet in Early Modern English by Shakespeare and a ghazal in Farsi by the 10th century Iranian poet, Rudaki, the first great literary genius of Modern Persian often referred to as the “Adam of Poets”. Love Metaphor begins with a stanza from Shakespeare’s Sonnet CXIII where the lover is deploring his situation after being separated from his beloved, left without a sense of presence in the moment where he can only see his beloved wherever or whatever he looks at, and cannot make a difference between the mountain and the sea, or between the day and the night. We are then taken to the mischievous wordplay by Rudaki celebrating the rebellious love affair where the father of the beloved is seen as a villain. The poem gives a sensual flavor with the poet comparing the beloved’s lips with agate and sugar. He takes pride in renouncing or belittling the entire world in comparison to the beautiful visage of his beloved.