Sunday, August 18, 2013

To The Promised Garden

Call my name!
Your voice is fine.

Your voice
is the chlorophyll
of those strange plants
that can only grow
at the intimacy of sorrow.

In the dimensions of the era of darkness,
I am lonelier than the taste of a soulful chord
played on the wide open palms
of these snowy, deserted lanes.

Come!
Come and I will tell you
how vast my loneliness is.

And my loneliness had never thought
of your massive advent,
inside the defined limits
of its silent rest.

But that is how Love is.

Look! there is no one,
Let us steal life
and then divide it in two rendez-vous!

Come!
Come and let us try to understand
the taste of ashes and dusts, at last.

Come!
Come and let us rush
to the waterfall and the baptism of sands.

Look at the hands of the fountain
above the spinning clock of pool:
They are making a circle out of time.
Come and be water this time!

Come,
Come and be a word to my blunt rhyme.
Come and flow, like a breeze, in my plain line.
Come and melt in my hands
the lightly mass of Love.

Look! there is no one,
Let us steal life
and then divide it in two rendez-vous!

Warm me!
Warm me in these freezing, dark lanes.

I am cold
and I am scared of the product of matches and doubt.
I am cold and I am scared of the cemented face of my sight!
I am scared of the lifeless chant of this night.

Come,
Come and let me not fear these towns!

Open me like a door
to the sacred ascend of metals,
and to the regular descent of fruits.

Charm me asleep!
Charm me asleep
under the dream of the friction of flesh,
and the combustion of matter!

And,
when The One
who carries the bag of dawn comes along
wake me up!

Wake me up!

And then,
Tell me about the bombs that fell when I was sleeping...
Tell me about the tears that flowed when I was sleeping...
Tell me how many doves fled from the trees...

Tell me!
Tell me:
on the day the tank- drove over the dreams of a child
where did the young canaries hang
the golden line of their songs?

Wake me up,
Wake me up and tell me,
tell me about the account of exports,
and tell me about the science of music,
and tell me about the taste of bread
in the stance of prophets.

And then,
As-if an evergreen Tree of Faith,
I will plant you at the gates of the Promised Garden.

 - Sohrab Sepehri -

1928 - 1980


Translated by Maryam Dilmaghani

The poem Beh Bagh-e Hamsafaran (literally meaning: To the Graden

of Co-voyagers) was first published in the anthology Hajm-e Sabz
(The Green Mass) 1967, Tehran.

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