Through the Looking Glass

 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

may whirl to wonder

what fluted thing 

could ruin love

as much as the rasp 

of eroding rain?

And when you hear rasp

you may think of rust,

another shade of ruin

related to rain.

Can you not still grasp

why Jalaluddin 

was among the Last Poets 

whose rustic beard

faced arrest in every nation

including rumination?

When the past Harvest moon

acquired a cover of clouds,

did you learn to lavender

your deepest bruise,

or did you begin

to whisker a weak chin 

as if your own ruined beauty 

was not a wearable thing?

Although you’ve seldom

whispered it, wabi-sabi—

Japanese for a reign of rust—

could be a roomy word.

When you first heard

the lavender flute

of a bruise begin to flower,

did you overhear

any trace of faith

in your imagination?

Could this sprouting

have prevented or incited 

a diction

to the long open you

found in “fruit”

or hinted why that i

so central to faith 

ran quietly as a letter 

left out in the rain?

And why may this dot

the eye in ruin

or the eye in union?

Assuming a wound could answer—

what would it deny?

Perhaps outside one window

the U in Rumi mishears

a whirling tune

of windblown petals 

reining in whispers

and wonders—

now sapphire as the i of a sufi—

if one spins

to whisk a thicker roux

from a flower’s fat sorrow,

do your beard

or your bruises

begin to masquerade

as faith or even masculinity?

Or do they merely mean

to seep a fluted mood

of wounded blooms

until there may

be some chance 

the Rumi in you

turns to sense

what separates us

from the nay in name 

or returns 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.