I asked Gemini 2.5 Pro to analyze the following poem and below the poem I posted its response. It’s a decent interpretation. I think the last frontier for any super intelligent AI will be language understanding and interpretation. We already have limited super intelligent AI that can play chess or Go or fold proteins far beyond what humans are capable of, but this is not yet the case for uses of language. Obviously poetry will be the last frontier of language use, so this is a decent test of where we are right now. Here is the poem—
THE RUMI IN YOU
hears a new
dialect of rain
then whirls & wonders
what fluted wound
could ruin love
more than the rasp
of rain eroding?
And when you hear rasp
do you think of rust,
another shade of ruin
related to rain?
Do you still not grasp
why Jalaluddin
was among the Last Poets
who faced annihilation
in every nation—
even rumination?
When the Harvest moon
was veiled by clouds,
did you learn to lavender
your deepest bruise,
or did you whisker
your weak chin as if
your own ruined beauty
wasn’t a wearable thing?
Even unspoken
wabi-sabi—
a reign of rust—
seems a roomy word.
When you first heard
a lavender flute
start to flower,
did you overhear
any traces of faith?
Did those traces
veil or reveal
a diction
to the long open you
found in “fruit”
or hint why that i
so central to faith
ran quietly as a letter
left out in the rain?
And does this dot
an eye in ruin
or an eye in union?
Perhaps outside your window
the U in Rumi mishears
a whirling tune
of windblown petals
reining in whispers
and turns sapphire
as the i of a sufi
to wonder:
if one spins
to whisk a thicker roux
from a flour’s fat sorrow—
do one’s beard
or bruises begin
to masquerade as faith
or even masculinity?
Or do they risk dissolving
into wounded blooms
until there’s a chance
the Rumi in you
may turn to sense
what separates us
from the nay in name
or return to view
how some become lovers
of the sound of rain,
yet others simply lovers
of the sound of ruin?
And here is Gemini’s analysis and interpretation.
Joel Dias-Porter's "THE RUMI IN YOU" is a complex and multi-layered poem that invites the reader into an active process of interpretation, largely through pervasive homophonic wordplay, strategic ambiguity in key phrases, and the innovative use of a colorpuntal "ghost poem." The title itself signals a central engagement with the legacy of Rumi, the 13th-century mystic poet, particularly his themes of ruin as a site for treasure and the soul's longing symbolized by the reed flute. Dias-Porter employs homophones and near-homophones throughout the poem to create resonant connections and multiple meanings. Examples include "rasp/grasp" (linking decay to understanding), "reign/rain" (connecting persistent difficult conditions to a state of being), "fluted/flute" (tying damaging influences to the symbol of the soul's lament), "roux/rue" (suggesting that sorrow and regret are the base ingredients from which substance or creation is derived), "rumi-nation" (collapsing external resistance to Rumi's ideas with internal struggles in contemplation), and the intricate play on "i/eye/I" and "nay/name" (exploring the vulnerable self, perception, identity, denial, ruin, and union). This sonic texture constantly opens up alternative readings, preventing any single interpretation from dominating.
The poem's fluidity is most pronounced in the phrases "what fluted thing could ruin love" and "turns to sense." The multiple potential meanings of "ruin" (destruction, to degrade, degrading love, ruining adoration) allow the "fluted thing" (perhaps a superficial influence, a painful expression like the reed flute's lament, or something else entirely) to be understood as causing different kinds of damage to love or the capacity for love and adoration. Similarly, "turns to sense" can mean either "revolves to perceive" or "changes to something understandable," fundamentally altering the nature of the realization or transformation described near the poem's end – is it a new way of seeing, or a difficult truth becoming clear? These varying interpretations of the core phrases refract the entire poem's thematic focus, leading to different understandings of the journey towards embracing "the Rumi in you" and what separates us.
Adding another dimension is the colorpuntal technique, where specific red words ("late," "harvest," "a," "lavender," "you," "overhear," "in," "the," "rain") form a hidden "ghost poem": "late harvest a lavender you overhear in the rain." This line, functioning like a monoku, provides a subconscious, sensory, and personal undercurrent to the host poem's more abstract exploration. It places the "you" directly within a scene of melancholic culmination ("late harvest"), difficult conditions ("in the rain"), indirect perception ("overhear"), and the presence of pain or healing ("lavender," echoing the "deepest bruise" and "lavender flute"). This ghost poem grounds the host poem's themes in lived experience, suggesting that the grappling with ruin, love, and spiritual understanding occurs amidst specific, felt realities, often perceived subtly rather than overtly confronted.
In synthesis, Dias-Porter employs these layered techniques – Rumi's philosophical backdrop, dense homophonic wordplay, ambiguous central phrases, and the contrapuntal ghost poem – to create a dynamic poetic experience. The poem is not a static statement but an interactive space where meanings are fluid and contingent on the reader's engagement with its sonic and semantic possibilities. It reflects the complex, often indirect, process of confronting pain, navigating internal and external resistance, and seeking transformative understanding within the "ruin" of human experience, echoing Rumi's profound insights through a distinctly contemporary and linguistically vibrant lens. The poem ultimately suggests that the path to finding "the Rumi in you" involves listening closely to the many voices, both overt and subtle, within and outside the self, even (or especially) those sounded in moments of pain and decay.
