Photos by
Mohamad Akhlaghi, ISNA
The 80th birthday
anniversary of late Iranian poet Sohrab
Sepehri is being marked in Kashan, Iran.
Sohrab Sepehri
(October 7, 1928 - April 21, 1980) was a notable modern Persian poet and a
painter. He was born in
Kashan in
Isfahan province of Iran. He is considered one of the five most famous
modern Persian (Iranian) poets who have practiced "New Poetry". Other
practitioners of this form were
Nima Youshij,
Ahmad
Shamlou,
Mehdi Akhavan-Sales, and
Forough Farrokhzad, all of whom are now dead.
The Sound of Water's Footsteps
Poem By: Sohrab Sepehri (translated
by: Roya Monajem, Tehran)
I am from Kashan
My life is not bad
I have a loaf of bread, a speck
of intelligence, a morsel of talent.
A mother, better than a leaf of
a tree,
Friends, better than a current
of water.
And a God not far away, but
Among these wallflowers, beneath
that tall pine tree
On the consciousness of water,
on the law of foliage.
I am a Moslem.
My ghebleh
is a red rose.
My janamaz,
a water spring, my mohr,
light
Field is my sajadeh.
I take vozou,
with the palpations of windows.
In my namaz
flows moon, flows rainbow
Stone is visible behind my namaz:
Crystallized are all the particles of my namaz.
I chant my namaz when
The wind has sung its azaan
on the minaret of cypress tree
I chant my namaz following 'takbirolharaam'
of grass,
Following ghadghaamat
of wave.
My Kaabah is by the shore,
My Kaabah is beneath acacia tree.
Like the breeze, my Kaabah travels from garden to garden,
from city to city.
My hajarolasvad
is the brightness of flowerbeds.
I am from Kashan
My craft is painting;
Every now and then, I make a
birdcage with paint, to sell to you,
So with the song of poppies that
it has imprisoned
Cheers up the heart of your
loneliness.
What a dream, what a dream!
I know my canvas is soul-less,
Surely I know that the pond of
my painting is fish-less.
I am from Kashan.
My descent perhaps goes back
To a foliage in India, to an
earthen vase in See-alk.
My descent goes back perhaps
To a prostitute in the city of
Bokhara.
My father died after twice
coming of swallows,
After twice falling of snow,
After twice sleeping in veranda,
After the passage of times.
When my father died, the sky was
blue,
My mother woke up innocently,
beautiful, got my sister.
When my father died, policemen
were all poets.
The grocer asked me: 'how many
melons do you want?'
'How much does a tiny bit of
happy heart cost?' I asked.
My father used to paint
He made and played the tar
too.
Beautiful was his hand-writing.
Our garden was on the shadowy
side of wisdom
Our garden was the knotting
place of feeling and foliage,
Our garden was in the focal
point of encounter of eye, cage and mirror.
Our garden was perhaps an arc of
green circle of bliss.
I'd chew the unripe fruit of god
in sleep, in those days.
I'd drink water
non-philosophically;
I'd pick berries
unknowledgeable-ly.
As soon as a pomegranate burst,
hand was a fountain of desire.
As soon as a Cello sang, breast
burnt with a longing to hear.
Every now and then, loneliness
stuck its face against the window.
Passion could arrive, folding
its arms around the feeling,
Thoughts would play.
Life was something like the
pouring of Feast of Spring,
like a plane tree
full of starlings.
In those days, life was like a
row of light and dolls,
Like an arm of freedom.
In those days, life was like a
pond of music.
Toddling slowly, the child
walked away through the alley of dragonflies.
I packed my suitcase, moved out
of the city of carefree fancies.
My heart, though, filled with
homesickness for dragonfly.
I joined the party of the World:
I visited the field of grief,
The garden of mysticism,
The lighted veranda of
knowledge.
I climbed up the stairs of
religion.
To the end of the alleyway of
doubt,
To the cool air of independence,
To the wet night of compassion.
I went to meet someone on the
other end of love.
I walked, I walked toward woman,
Toward the light of pleasure,
Toward the silence of desire,
Toward the sound of the wing of
loneliness.
I saw many things on Earth:
I saw a child smelling Moon.
I saw a cage with no doors,
brilliance flapping its wings in there.
A ladder on which love ascended
to the roof of heaven.
I saw a woman pounding light in
the mortar.
On their table for lunch, there
laid bread, fresh herbs, aloofness of dew
the hot bowl of compassion.
I saw a beggar walking door to
door, begging the song of a lark
And a sweeper chanting his
prayer to the peeling of a melon.
I saw a lamb eating paper-kite.
I saw a donkey understanding
hay.
In the meadow of 'advice,' I saw
a satiated cow.
I saw a poet talking to a lily,
addressing it as 'You, (Your Highness).'
I saw a book with its words all
of crystal.
I saw a paper of the same nature
as spring.
I saw a museum far from
vegetation,
A mosque far from water.
Above the bed of a hopeless
scholar, I saw a vase filled with questions.
I saw a mule with a load of
'essays'
I saw a camel with a load of
empty basket of 'maxims'.
I saw a mystic with a load of
'tanana ha ya hoo'.
I saw a train carrying
brightness.
I saw a train carrying religious
jurisprudence, so torrential it ran.
I saw a train carrying politics
(and so empty it ran).
I saw a train carrying the seeds
of lotus and the song of canary.
And an aeroplane that on that
height of thousands of feet
Dust was visible on its window:
The comb of hoopoe,
The spots of a butterfly's wing,
The picture of a frog in a pond
And the passage of a fly through
the alleyway of loneliness.
The clear desire of a sparrow
when it lands on earth from a plane tree.
And the maturation of Sun.
And the beautiful lovemaking of
a doll with morning.
I saw stairs that ascended to
the greenhouse of lust;
Stairs running toward the cellar
of alcohol;
Stairs running toward the
corruption of red roses
And toward the mathematical
conception of existence;
Stairs running toward the roof
of Enlightenment;
Stairs running toward the
platform of manifestation.
Down there, my mother was
Washing cup in the stream of
memory.
The city was visible:
The geometrical growth of
cement, steel, stones.
The pigeon-less roofs of a
hundred buses.
A florist was putting his
flowers up for sale.
A poet was hanging a swing amid
two jasmine trees.
A boy was throwing stones at the
wall of a school.
A child was spitting plum stones
upon the faded praying rug of the father.
And a goat was drinking water
from the Khazar
of a Geographical map.
A laundry line was visible: a
restless brassier.
The wheel of a cart longing for
the horse to become weary,
The horse longing for the carter
to sleep,
The carter longing for death to
arrive.
Love was visible, wave was
visible.
Snow was visible, friendship was
visible.
Word was visible.
Water was visible, so was the
reflection of matter in water.
The canopy of cells in the heat
of blood
The humid side of existence
The East of Grief in the heart
of humanity
The season of roaming in the
alley of woman
The fragrance of loneliness in
the alley of season.
A flabellum
was visible in the hand of summer.
The journey of seed to flower;
The journey of ivy from this to
that house;
The journey of Moon to the pond;
The eruption of Snowdrops from
the earth;
The pouring of young vine from
the wall;
The raining of dew on the bridge
of dreams;
The leaping of joy over the
fortress of death;
The passage of accident behind
the words.
The war between a hole and the
plea of light,
The war between a step and the
large foot of Sun,
The war between loneliness and a
song,
The sweet war of pears with the
emptiness of a basket,
The gory war of pomegranate with
teeth,
The war of a parrot with
eloquence,
The war of a praying forehead
with the coldness of earth.
The onslaught of mosque's tiles
on prostration,
The onslaught of wind on
ascension of soap bubble,
The onslaught of a troop of
butterflies across the plan of 'extermination of pests,'
The onslaught of a flock of
crickets upon 'plumbers,'
The onslaught of regiment of
reed-pen writing across leaden letters,
The onslaught of a word on a
poet's jaw,
The conquest of a century by a
poem,
The conquest of a garden by a
starling,
The conquest of an alleyway by
two `helloes',
The conquest of a city by three
or four wooden horsemen,
The conquest of a spring
festival by two dolls, one ball,
The murder of a rattle on the
bed of afternoon,
The murder of a story at the
beginning of the alleyway of sleep,
The murder of sorrow by the
order of a chant,
The murder of moonlight by the
neon light,
The murder of willow tree by the
'regime,'
The murder of a sad poet by
Chimonanthus
The entire of Earth surface was
visible.
Verse was walking through the
alley of Greece.
Owl was howling in the 'Hanging
Gardens' of Babylon;
In the gorge of Kheibar, wind
was shoving a lace of History dust to the East.
On the serene lake of 'Negin,' a
yacht was delivering flowers.
In Bonars, an eternal lantern
was burning.
I saw people.
I saw cities.
I saw fields, mountains.
I saw water, I saw earth.
I saw Light and Darkness.
And I saw the foliage in Light,
and I saw the foliage in Darkness.
And I saw humanity in Light, and
I saw humanity in Darkness.
I am from Kashan, but
My city is not Kashan.
My city is lost.
Out of swing, out of fever
I've built a home, on the other
side of night.
In this home, I am close to the
wet anonymity of grass.
I hear the breathing of
flowerbeds
And the sound of Darkness when a
leaf falls down,
And the sound of brightness
coughing behind a tree,
The sneezing of water in every
gap of stone,
Checkcheck chelcheleh
from the ceiling of spring,
And the clear voice of the
window of loneliness, opening and closing
And the pure vague sound of love
shedding its skins,
The fervor of passion to soar,
concentrating in the wings'
And the cracking of
self-restraint in Spirit.
I hear the sound of steps of
desire
And the lawful sound of
footsteps of blood in veins,
Pulsation of the spell of
pigeon's well,
Beating of the heart of a
Friday's night,
The drift of clover in thought,
Pure neighing of truth from
afar.
I hear the sound of gust of
matter
And the sound of Faith's shoes
in the alley of Passion,
And the sound of rain on the wet
eyelid of love,
On the sad music of maturation,
On the song of pomegranate
gardens,
And the crumbling sound of the
bottle of joy at night,
The ripping sound of the paper
of beauty,
The filling and emptying of
nostalgia's bowl with wind.
I am close to the beginning of
earth.
I take the pulse of flowers.
I am familiar with the wet fate
of water, green habit of tree.
My spirit flows in fresh
direction of objects.
My spirit has not lived that
long.
My spirit coughs sometimes out
of passion.
My spirit is idle:
It counts the drops of water,
the gaps between the bricks.
My spirit is sometime as true as
a stepping stone.
I haven't seen two fir trees
hostile to each other.
I haven't seen a willow tree
selling its shadow to the earth.
The elm tree offers its branch
for free to the crow.
Wherever there is a leaf, my
passion blossoms in the flux of being.
Like the wing of an insect, I
know the mass of the dawn.
Like a vase, I listen to the
music of growth.
Like a basket full of fruit, I
suffer from the fever of reaching.
Like a tavern, I am standing at
the frontier of malady.
Like a building on the shore, I
am concerned with never-ending high-waves.
Suns, as much as you will; bond,
as much as you will; reproduction, as much as you will.
I am content with an apple
And with smelling a chamomile
bush.
I am content with having a
mirror, a pure attachment.
I don't laugh if a balloon
bursts.
And I don't laugh if a
philosophy halves the Moon.
I am familiar with the flapping
sound of the quail's wings,
With the colors of the bustard's
belly, the foot-trace of wild goat.
I know very well where rhubarb
grows.
When starlings arrive, when a
partridge sings, when a falcon dies,
I know the meaning of Moon in
the dream of desert,
Of death in the stem of desire
And the raspberry of pleasure,
under the tooth of making love.
Life is a lovely ritual.
Life has wings and feathers as
vast as Death,
A leap as high as love.
Life is not something to be left
forgotten on the windowsill of habit by thou and me.
Life is the rapture of a hand
that harvests.
Life is the taste of the first
black fig in the acrid mouth of summer.
Life is the dimension of a tree
in the eye of an insect.
Life is the moth's experience in
darkness.
Life is a strange feeling that a
migrating bird has.
Life is the whistling of a train
that echoes in the sleep of a bridge.
Life is watching a flowerbed
from the sealed window of an aeroplane.
Is the news of the launch of a
rocket to space,
Touching the loneliness of Moon,
The notion of smelling a flower
on another planet.
Life is washing a dish.
Life is finding a penny in the
brook of the street.
Life is 'square root' of mirror.
Life is flower 'to the power' of
eternity.
Life is 'multiplication' of
earth by beatings of our hearts.
No matter where I am,
Sky is mine.
The window, thought, air, love,
earth is mine.
Why should it matter
If every now and then get taller
The mushrooms of melancholy?
I don't know
Why it is said: 'horse is
gallant, pigeon is beautiful.'
And why nobody keeps a vulture
in a cage.
What is absent in sweet clover
that is present in red tulip.
Washed should be the eyes,
another vision should be found.
Washed should be the words.
Word itself should be the wind;
word itself should be the rain.
Umbrellas should be closed.
Under the rain, should every one
go.
Under the rain, thought and
memory should be taken.
With all people of the city,
under the rain, one should go.
Friend, under the rain, should
be met,
Love, under the rain, should be
sought.
Under the rain one should sleep
with women.
Under the rain one should play.
Under the rain one should write,
talk, sow lotus.
Life is getting wet time after
time.
Life is swimming in the pond of
'Now.'
Let us take off our robes:
Water is only a step ahead.
Let us taste brightness,
Weigh the night of a village,
the sleep of a deer,
Perceive the warmth of the
stork's nest,
Tread not on the law of lawn,
Loosen the knot of taste in
vineyard.
And open the mouth, if the Moon
comes out,
And cry not that the Night is
bad,
And cry not that the glowworm is
unaware of the garden's vision.
And let us bring baskets
And pick up so much red, so much
green.
In the mornings, let us eat
bread and pennycress
And plant a young tree on every
turn of speech.
And scatter the seed of silence
amid two syllables.
And read not the book through
which the wind does not blow,
And the book in which the skin
of dew is not wet,
And the book in which cells are
without dimension.
And we should not will a fly
dash off the tip of the finger of Nature.
And we should not will a leopard
walk out of the door of creation.
And we should know that life
lacked something, if the worms did not exist.
And without a scratch on its
bark, the law of tree would be offended.
And if there were no death, our
hands would search for something else.
And we should know that before
corals, a void existed in the thoughts
of
seas.
And we should not ask: 'where
are we?
But only sense the fresh
petunias of the hospital.
And we should not ask, where is
the fountain of luck?
And we should not ask, why the
heart of truth is blue?
And we should not ask, what sort
of night had the forefathers of the fathers of breeze?
There is no living space behind
the back.
Behind the back, bird does not
sing.
Behind the back, wind does not
blow.
Behind the back, the green
window of fir tree is closed.
Behind the back, dust covers all
the peg tops.
Behind the back rests the
exhaustion of history.
Behind the back pours the
remembrance of wave on the cold shell coast of stillness.
Let us go to the seashore,
Spread the net on the water,
Catch freshness out of the
water.
Pick up a pebble from the ground
And feel the weight of being.
Curse not the Moonlight if we
have fever,
(I've sometimes seen in fever,
the Moon comes down
The hand reaches the ceiling of
Heavens.
I've seen goldfinch singing
better.
Every now and then, the wound on
my foot
Has taught me all the nuances of
the earth.
Every now and then, in my
sickbed, the size of flower has multiplied
And has increased the diameter
of sour orange, the radius of lantern.)
And let us not fear death
(Death is not the end of the
pigeon.
Death is not the cricket upside
down.
Death flows in the mind of
Acacia.
Death takes a seat in the
pleasant climate of thinking.
Death speaks of morning in the
heart of a village's night.
Death comes into the mouth with
the cluster of grapes.
Death sings in the red larynx of
throat.
Death is responsible for the
beauty of butterfly's wing.
Death picks up basil every now
and then.
Death drinks vodka every now and
then.
Every now and then, it sits in
the shadow staring at us.
And we all know
The lungs of pleasure are full
of the oxygen of death.)
Shut not the door to the live
speech of Fate coming
from behind the wattles
of sound.
Draw back the curtains:
Let the feeling gets aired.
Let maturity settle under any
bush it will.
Let instinct go to play games,
Take off its shoes, and chasing
seasons, let it jump
over the flowers.
Let loneliness sing.
Write something.
Go to the street.
Let us be simple.
Let us be simple, whether behind
a bank's counter or under a tree.
Our job is not to discover the
'secret' of the red rose,
Our job is, perhaps,
To float in the charm of roses,
Camp behind wisdom,
Wash our hands in the ecstasy of
a tree leaf before sitting
at
the dining table.
Get born with the sun rising in
the morning.
Make excitements fly.
Spread water on the perception
of space, color, sound, window and flower.
Position the sky in-between the
two syllables of 'being.'
Fill and empty the lungs with
eternity.
Take the load of knowledge off
the swallow's shoulders.
Reclaim name from cloud,
From fir tree, mosquito, summer.
Climb to the heights of
compassion on the wet foot of rain.
Open the door to humanity and
light and foliage and insects.
Our job is perhaps
To run after the song of truth
Amidst Lotus flower and Century.
Kashan, village of
Chenar (plane tree), summer of 1343 (1964).
Notes:
"I would like to thank Katherine L. Clark who took the great trouble of
reading this poem and pointing to me a few instances of my shortcomings."
In
a more international language, this part can be translated as:
I am Moslem.
I stand
towards a red rose to pray.
I stand on a
water spring to pray.
I prostrate on
light to pray.
A Field is my
praying carpet.
I perform my
ablution,
With the
pulsations of windows.
In my prayer,
surges moon, surges the spectrum of light.
Stone is
visible behind my prayer,
Crystallized
are all the particles of my prayer.
I chant my
prayer when
The wind has
sung its bid to pray
On the minaret
of a cypress tree.
I chant my
prayer following the 'God is great' hymn of grass,
Following the
call: 'rise on feet' of a wave.
My temple is
by the shore,
My temple is
under the acacia tree
Like the
breeze, my temple travels from garden to garden, from city to city.
My holy Black
Stone is the brightness of flowerbeds
ghebleh: Qibla or
Qiblah, the direction of Kaaba Shrine in Mecca toward which all Moslems turn
in ritual prayer.
Janamaz is a
piece of material sewed for this purpose and usually with beautiful
handiwork in which Mohr, (see the following footnote) is kept.
Mohr: a piece of
hardened clay taken from a holy place that Moslems put their forehead on
when they sort of prostrate.
Sajadeh is a
praying rug.
Vosou is the
ritual washing before praying. I have used it with the verb 'to take' on
the similar basis as 'to take a bath or shower'
Namaz is the name
of the ritual prayer
Azaan is
Persian pronunciation for Izan or call to prayer
Takbirolahraam
is the expression for the saying 'god is great' uttered at the beginning of
the daily prayer. Hajarolasvad is the holy black hole by the Kaaba
shrine that Moslem kiss during the ceremony of haj (pilgrimage
ghad-ghaamat: it
means 'rise' in Arabic. Adding the sound of 'o' between the two words
identified here by the hyphen, it would mean in Persian, 'height.' So the
meaning of this line would literally be 'Following the call: 'rise to pray'
of the wave.
Hajarolasvad is
the holy black hole by the Kaaba shrine that Moslem kiss during the ceremony
of haj (pilgrimage).
One of the most ancient
archaeological sites in Iran, showing the existence of a relatively advanced
civilization around 7000 years ago.
Tar: an Iranian
string musical instrument
I could not find
tanana in any dictionary, and it sounds like one of those typical
coinages by Rumi, 'tan' however means 'body' in Persian and 'ha'
is the plural sign. 'body' in Persian, ya hoo, in Arabic means, O
Lord.
A bird of the same
size of a large thrush with handsome erectile semicircular crest and
cinnamon-colored and back plumage.
Another name of Caspian
Sea.
An evergreen Asiatic
tree with small dark yellow beautiful smelling flowers. In Persian it is
literally called 'frost flower' as the flowers appear when the weather gets
really cold, preferably frosty.
The Persian word for
'swing' is 'taab' also meaning 'endurance.' Fever is 'tab' in
Persian and the expression tab o taab implies a kind of restlessness
observed in high fevers. Some of the implied meanings of English word
'swing' are not that far from the Persian word 'taab'
Related Site:
www.sohrabsepehri.com
... Payvand News - 10/07/08 ...
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