As Poetry Society of NY’s 2025 spring gala honoree, Haleh Liza Gafori was gifted a crystal ball. Holding it up, she began her speech addressed to a room full of poets.
Thank you, Poetry Society of NY. I love this crystal ball! What shall we do with it? Let’s envision another world with this crystal ball—one based not on domination and subordination but on collaboration and partnership, compassion and empathy, empathy, empathy.
Thank you all for being here. We are living in times that are in some ways deeply concerning and terrifying, and in others, extraordinary and beautiful. Every day we are shocked by the outrageous blunders, trespasses, and cruelties of an increasingly authoritarian regime. Every day new lies are presented as truth. Every day we watch the continued atrocities in Palestine, in the Congo, in Ukraine.
One thing I ask of all of us: don’t turn a blind eye, don’t go numb. Stay tender. Don’t harden, don’t petrify to stone. I love this quote by Tennessee Williams. He says, “Survive without the calcification of the tender membranes. Be a poet. Be alive.”
So let us survive these times without hardening, without the “calcification of the tender membrane” and with a strong backbone. We need both, and it’s in community where we cultivate these. Tenderness is a kind of vulnerability, it’s about seeing reality and remaining empathic, permeable, translucent, and caring. Poet Robert Duncan said, “Respond. Respond. Respond. Preserve your ability to respond.” And how do you preserve your ability to respond? You stay tender and keep a strong backbone.
Let us respond—and let us remember too what we are doing here. Places like this, communities like the Poetry Society of New York, are laying the groundwork not just for poems to bloom and books to bloom but for friendships and community to bloom. And it is in community, in friendship that we can lean on each other, stay tender and remind each other to stay strong.
I want to say to you poets, you might be the antenna of our times. You might be the tongue, the heart, the soul of our times, the balm, the bridge, the gardener, jester, revolutionary, siren, shaman, un-tier of tied knots in the human psyche, the breaker of mind-forged manacles in the human psyche. You might be the key that unlocks prison doors. You might be the miner of invisible gems—the invisible gems of heart-infused consciousness. You might be the miner of those gems. You might be the sower of those seeds. If we have dog whisperers, poets are humankind whisperers. You might be a bullhorn on the mount. So be it. Be the truth-teller, be the oracle, be the moonlit river running through the body of the listener.
Clear us with your waters of clarity, sweeten us with your honey, nourish us with your milk, intoxicate us with your wine, Poet—archivist and futurist, microscope, telescope, and periscope. You know what a periscope is? You know what a periscope does?
There might be an obstacle, there might be obfuscation because the authoritarian regime loves to keep things unseeable. So you are the periscope that says, nah, I see beyond that, and I’m gonna show you what I see. Show us the details through the microscope and show us the big picture through the telescope. And I ask you, as my great ancestor Molana al Jalludin Muhannam ibn Hussain Balkhi aka Rumi said, “Lift the veil from your face, speak out loud!”
Galvanize us, poets. Galvanize us into action with your outrage. Tenderize with your grief. Delight us with your praise. With your eyes of praise and wonder, help us to protect this beautiful earth. You know they say, “It takes a village to raise a child”? Well, it takes an interconnected, international mass of human beings to raise this earth to a more heavenly iteration.
Let us stop normalizing war and normalizing the paradigm of domination and subordination. We have imaginations. We can imagine other possibilities, other ways of being. Some say “it’s always been this way and it’ll always be this way,” but that’s a cop-out and a false statement.
The poet Robert Bly was considered the leader of the men’s movement back in the 80’s and 90’s. He took men out to the forest. He took Vietnam vets out to the forest and he said, “Men, you need to weep. Go ahead and weep. Weep,” he said, “and if you don’t weep, nothing’s ever going to change.” He was encouraging them to feel, to keep their membranes tender, as Tennessee Williams urged us to do. The writer bell hooks said, the very first thing patriarchy asks men to do is actually not to oppress women, but to commit violence against them themselves by cutting themselves off from feeling. I ask you not to do that. Don’t cut yourself off from feeling. Feel, feel, feel. Feel it all. Keep your membranes tender.
And feel the beauty of this earth. This earth gives us carrots. This earth gives us peaches and spinach and kale and lemons. This earth gives us beautiful orchids that are hot as fuck. It’s a sensual and beautiful earth. Feel the orgasmic, sensual, sexual pleasure by noticing all of this.
Love is not only eros, not only romantic love between two people. Fall in love with the world. Fall in love with the earth. Women, non-binary, men, all of us! Fall in love with this great chance we have to exist, to live, to walk this magical earth. And as you celebrate, weep the terrible things that humans do. Weep about it and we will start to change. We will. The evolution of consciousness, the deepening of compassion is the way, crucial to our survival as a species. And we do go two steps forward and one step back, two steps forward and one step back, but we’re still going forward and we will continue.
As some of you know, I’ve been translating the 13th century sage, Molana al Jalaludin Muhammad ibn Hussain Balkhi aka Rumi since 2016. He asks,
If you plunge in Love’s ocean,
if you swim like a fish in Love’s ocean
what will happen?
Here are some excerpts from one of Rumi’s ghazals, number 2144. It is a poem that is speaking directly to us in these times. In the poem, he presents a series of apocalyptic visions and asks us, who are we going to be in the face of them?
Whatever the ways of the world,
what fruits do you bring?
Say famine strikes,
no bread or bowl of rice in the land,
royal in rank, royal heart, where is your hand?
Where is your measuring cup and storehouse of grain?
Say earth and sky fall to idolatry,
all of us on our knees worshipping figurines,
where is the idol noble enough to break that spell?
Say scorpions, thorns, and snakes overrun the world,
even so, you are brimming with joy.
Where is your garden? Take us to the flowers.
Say misers rule. Generosity fades from memory.
Still, your eyes see, your heart is full.
What wage will you pay?
What clothes will you offer the stripped and bare?
Say sun and moon go down in hell’s flames,
what light will you shine?
what fire will you light before we can’t see,
before we can’t hear?
Then he goes on,
Come, let’s put this aside,
We’re drunk on a lofty ale and it’s getting late.
Where, my friend, is your tavern?
Take us there.
And that tavern? That’s where meaning is on tap. That’s where Love is on tap. That’s where oneness is on tap. The armor thins. The walls between us come down.
It’s getting late. Come, my friend.
Where is your tavern? Take us there.
Written by Haleh Liza Gafori
Haleh Liza Gafori is a NYC-born translator, performance artist, writer, musician, and educator of Iranian descent. Her most recent book of Rumi translations Water was released in April 2025, a follow-up to her acclaimed first volume, Gold, released in 2022, both published by NYRB Classics. A 2024 MacDowell fellow and a recipient of a grant from NYSCA, Gafori has created a cross-media musical performance based on her Rumi translations. Gafori's writings have been published by Columbia University Press, Harvard Review, Paris Review, and others. Gafori is also a seasoned musician who cherishes her time around fires and beside rivers, in jungles and cities, listening and learning songs and chants in animist and mystical traditions. These experiences inform her vision of a more heart-centered, tender world.