The Water’s Footfall
By
Sohrab Sepehri
Translated by Abbas Zahedi
I’m a native of Kashan
Life is not so bad.
I have a bit of bread, an iota of intelligence
And a bit of wit.
I’ve a mother, better than a leaf;
And friends, better than running water.
And a God who lives nearby:
Amidst these gillyflowers, near that tall pine tree
Over water’s cognition, over the ontogeny of plant.
I’m a Muslim:
A rose is my qibla .
A spring, my prayer-rug, the light, my prayer-stone .
The plains, my mosque.
I perform ablutions with the heartbeats of windows.
Through a prayer flows the moon, flows the spectrum.
Rocks are visible through my prayers.
All particles of my prayer are translucent,
I say my prayers
When the wind proclaims adhan
From the minaret of the cypress tree.
I say my prayers after the takbirat al-Ihram of grass
After the qad qamat of waves.
My Ka’ba lies by the water
Beneath the acacias.
Like a breeze, my Ka’ba wafts from orchard to orchard,
from town to town.
My Black Stone is the light reflected on flowerbeds.
I’m a native of Kashan:
An artist by profession.
Sometimes, I build a cage of colors and offer it for sale
To ease your lonely heart
With the song of the peony confined therein.
Its’ a fancy! Only a fancy!... I know.
My canvas is lifeless.
I well know my painted pond is fishless.
I’m a native of Kashan,
Descending perhaps
From a plant in India, an earthenware from Sialk
Or perhaps from a prostitute in the streets of Bukhara.
Father died after twice migrating of swallows,
Twice sleeping on the terraced-roof;
Father died beyond Time.
When my father died, the sky shone blue.
My mother jumped up from sleep. My sister turned pretty.
When my father died the police were all poets.
“How many kilos of melon?” the greengrocer asked.
“How much is a gram of consolidation?” I reciprocated.
Father painted
Made tars , played the tar as well.
He wrote a fine hand too.
Our garden stood on the shadowy side of wisdom.
On the interweaving point of emotion and plant.
On the intermingling point of vision, cage, and mirror.
Our garden was perhaps an arc from the Green Circle of Bliss.
Asleep, I then chewed on God’s Green Fruits
Drank water unphilosophically, As soon as a pomegranate burst,
my hands became a Fountain of Desire.
As soon as a lark sang a merry note,
my heart craved to listen.
Sometimes, Solitude pressed its face to the window glass.
Longing turned up, putting its arms round Sense’s neck.
Fancy frolicked.
Life was something like a vernal rainfall,
a plane tree inhabited by starlings.
Life, then, was a row of light and dolls
An armful of freedom.
Life, then was a Pond of Music.
Gradually, the child tiptoed away in the alleyway
of dragonflies.
I packed my things, leaving the town of light fantasies.
My heart heavy with the nostalgia for dragonflies.
I went to the Banquet of World
To the Plain of Sorrow
To the Garden of Mysticism
To the Illuminated Hall of Science.
I climbed up the Stairs of Religion.
I went as far as the alleyway of doubt
As far as the cool air of contentment
As far as the wet night of affection.
I went to meet someone at the other end of love.
I went on and on as far as Woman
As far as the lamp of pleasure
As far as the silence of desire
As far as the fluttering sound of solitude.
I saw many things on earth: a child sniffed the moon.
Light fluttered in a doorless cage.
Love ascended to the Heaven by a ladder
A woman pounded light in a mortar.
For lunch they had bread, vegetables, a plate of dew
and a warm Bowl of Affection.
I saw a beggar
Going from one door to another, asking for a lark’s song
And a street cleaner praying in front of a melon skin.
I saw a lamb munching kites
An ass appreciating fodder
And a cow surfeited with Advice.
I saw a poet addressing a lily “Your Excellency!”.
I saw a book with crystal words.
A sheet of paper made from spring.
A museum remote from verdure.
A mosque remote from water.
By the bed of a desperate theologian stood a jugful
of questions.
I saw a mule laden with proses.
A camel laden with empty baskets of questions.
And a mystic laden with tanana-ha-yahu .
I saw a train carrying light:
A train carried theology, and how heavy it was.
A train carried politics, and how empty it was.
A train carried lotus seeds and the songs of canaries.
And a plane flew at thousands of feet
Yet, in its windows the earth could be seen:
The hoopoe’s crest
The markings on the butterfly’s wings
A frog’s reflection in the pond
The flight of a fly through the street of solitude
And a sparrow’s bright desire to descend
from a plane tree to the ground.
The sun’s maturity
And the lovely love-making of the doll with dawn.
A flight of stairs led to the Hotbed of Lust
To the Cellar of Alcohol
To the Law of Rose Decay
To the Arithmetic of Perception of Aliveness
To the Rooftops of Revelation
To the Platform of Epiphany.
Far below me
My mother was washing cups in the Memory of River.
The town was visible:
The growing geometry of cement, iron and stone
The pigeon-free rooftops of hundred of buses.
A flower lady slashed her prices.
A poet suspended a swing of rope between two lilac trees.
A boy pelted stones at the school wall
A child spat apricot seeds on his father’s faded prayer-rug.
On a map, a goat drank water from the Caspian Sea.
A clothes-line was visible; a frantic bra.
A cart wheel pined for the horse to halt
The horse for the driver to fall asleep
The driver on the cart longed for death.
Love was visible, waves were visible,
Snow was visible, friendship was visible,
Word was visible.
Water was visible the reflection of objects in water
The Cool Shade of Cells in the Heat of Blood
The Moist Side of Life
The Eastern Sorrow of Human Soul
Season of roaming in the Alleyway of Woman
Scent of Solitude in the Alleyway of Seasons.
Summer held a fan in hand.
The seed travelled into flower
The creepers from one house to another
The moon into the pond,
The meadow rue gushed from the earth.
The young vines climbed down the wall.
The dewdrops poured over the Bridge of Sleep.
Joy leaped over the Ditch of Death.
Accidents passed from beyond Words.
A chink resisted the pleading light.
Stairs struggled to soar over the Sun’s long leg.
Solitude combated a song.
Pears tried to fill the empty basket.
A pomegranate defied the teeth,
The Nazis battled against a sensitive plant.
A parrot outfaced eloquence.
A brow fought the cold prayer-stone.
The mosque tiles attacked the worshippers.
The wind resisted the soaring soap bubbles.
An army of butterflies tried to thwart the Pest Control Program
A swarm of dragonflies attacked Water Main Workers.
A regiment of reeds assaulted the lead letters.
Words clogged a poet’s jaw.
A century conquered a poem
An orchard conquered by a starling
An alleyway conquered by an exchange of salutations
A town conquered the three or four wooden horsemen
A New Year’s Eve conquered by two dolls and a ball.
A rattle box murdered on the siesta mattress
A tale murdered at the mouth of Alleyway of Sleep
A sorrow murdered at the command of a song
The moonlight murdered at the command of neon light
A willow tree murdered by government
A desperate poet murdered by a snowdrop.
The entire face of the earth was visible.
Order reigned in Greek alleyways.
An owl hooted in the Hanging Gardens.
The wind blew scraps of history at Khybar Pass.
A boat carried flowers on the tranquil Lake Negueen.
In each lane in Benara, a lamp burned perpetually.
I saw people.
I saw towns.
I saw mountains and plains.
I saw water, and earth.
I saw light and darkness.
I saw plants in light and plants in darkness.
I saw animals in light and animals in darkness.
I saw man in light and man in darkness.
I’m a native of Kashan, but
My hometown is not Kashan.
My hometown is lost.
With endurance and stamina
I have built a house on the other side of night.
In this house, I live close to the Moist Obscurity of Grass.
I hear the garden breathing
Darkness falling down a leaf
And Light coughing from behind the tree.
I hear Water sneezing through the cracks of the rock.
Swallows dripping down through the ceiling of spring
Clear sounds: Window of Solitude opening and closing
Pure sounds: Love vaguely sloughing off its skin
The passion for flight gathering in the wings;
And the soul resisting to crack.
I hear the Footall of Desire
And the lawful tread of blood in veins.
The Pulse of the Dawn of the Pigeons’ Well
The Heartbeats of Thursday Nights
The flow of carnation in the mind
The Pure Neighing of Truth from afar.
I hear Matter blowing
Faith walking in the Alleyway of Longing
The rain pattering on the wet eyelids of love
Over the Mournful Music of Maturity
Over the song of pomegranate orchards
The Glass of Gladness crashing at night
The Paper of Beauty tearing into pieces
And the Bowl of Nostalgia filling and emptying with wind.
I am close to the beginning of the earth.
I take the pulse of flowers
I know the Wet Fate of Water, the Green Habit of Trees.
My soul flows in the new direction of objects.
My soul is young.
My soul sometimes coughs from longing.
My soul idles:
It counts raindrops, the chinks of bricks.
My soul is sometimes true as a rock on the road.
Never have I seen two poplar trees at war.
Never have I seen a willow selling its shade to the ground.
The elm tree offers its branches to the crows gratis.
Wherever there is a leaf, my passion blossoms.
A poppy bathes me in the Flow of Being.
Like an insect’s wings I feel the weight of the dawn.
Like a vase I listen to the Music of Growing.
Like a basketful of fruit I pine for ripening.
Like a tavern I stand on the
Borderline of Languor.
Like a cottage by the sea, I fear eternal long waves.
Sun, union, reproduction in abundance.
I am contented with an apple
And with the smell of a chamomile.
I am satisfied with a mirror, with a pure relationship
I won’t laugh at a child if his balloon bursts.
I won’t sneer when a philosophy halves the moon.
I know the fluttering of quail’s wings
The color of bustard’s belly, the footprints of chamois.
I know where rhubarbs grow
When starlings migrate, when partridges sing,
When falcons die.
I know what the moon means in the Sleep of Desert
Death in the Stalks of Desire.
And the raspberries of joy in the mouth of copulation.
Life is a pleasant custom. Life flies as big as Death.
Life leaps as high as Love.
Life may not vanish from our mind
like something on the habit shelf.
Life is the ecstasy of a hand that picks
A first black fig in the Acrid Mouth of Summer
The dimension of a tree in the eyes of an insect
The experience of a moth in darkness
A strange sense experienced by a migrating bird
The whistle of a train echoing in the Sleep of a Bridge
The sight of a garden through the sealed windows of a plane
The news of a rocket being launched into space.
Life is touching the solitude of the moon.
Life is smelling a flower on another planet.
Life is washing a plate.
Life is finding a ten-shahi coin in the street gutter.
Life is the square root of a mirror.
A flower raised to the power of eternity.
The earth multiplied by our heartbeats.
A simple and equal geometry of breaths.
Wherever I am, let me be
The heaven is mine.
Window, mind, air, love and earth are mine.
What matter
If the fungi of Nostalgia
Sometimes bloom?
I wonder
Why a horse is a noble animal, and a dove is lovely
And why no on pets a vulture.
I wonder why a clover is inferior to a red tulip.
We need to rinse our eyes, and view things differently.
We should wash our words
To be both wind and rain.
We should close our umbrellas
Walk in the rain
Take Mind and Memory in the rain
Walk in the rain with all the townsfolk
Meet friends in the rain
Seek love in the rain
Make love to a woman in the rain
Play in the rain
Write, speak, and plant lotus flowers in the rain.
Life is a perpetual soaking.
Life is bathing in the Pond of Now.
Let’s take off our clothes
Water is one step off.
Let’s taste light
Weigh the night of a village, the sleep of a gazelle.
Let’s fathom the warmth of a stork’s nest.
Let’s not tread on the Law of Grass.
Let’s delight our palate in the vineyard
And open our mouths when the moon rises.
Let’s not say the night is a foul thing
Or the glow-worm is ignorant of the garden’s insight.
Let’s fetch baskets
And fill them with all these reds and greens.
Let’s eat bread and mellow for breakfast.
Let’s plant a sapling in every pitch of each sentence.
And sow Seeds of Silence between two syllables.
Let’s not read a wind-free book
And the book in which the skin of dew is not wet
And the book in which the cells are dimension-free.
Let’s not wish the fly scared off the Fingertips of Nature.
Let’s not wish the panther wiped away from Creation.
Life would lack something with no worms.
The laws of tree would suffer without caterpillars.
Our hands would seek something if there was no death.
The Living Logic of Flight would alter if there was no light.
There was a void in the mind of the seas
before seaweed emerged.
Let’s not ask where we are.
Let’s smell the fresh hospital petunias.
Let’s not ask where the Fountain of Fortune is
Why the Heart of Truth is blue
What a night, what a breeze our forefathers experienced.
Behind us is no living space.
Behind us is no singing bird.
Behind us is no blowing wind.
Behind us the Green Window of the Poplar is closed.
Behind us the children’s windmills gather dust.
Behind us the Memory of Waves pours
the cold motionless shells unto the shore.
Let’s go to the seashore
Cast our nets into the sea
And catch freshness of water.
Let’s pick a pebble
And weigh the gravity of Being.
Let’s not curse the moonlight when we have a temperature.
(Once in a fever, I noticed the moon descend
The arms stretch for the heaven.
I heard the goldfinch warbling better.)
Sometimes, the wounds in my feet
Have taught me the ups and downs of the earth.
Sometimes, in my sickbed, the flowers multiplied
And the orange and the lantern increased in size.
Let’s not stand in dread of death.
(Death is not the end of a pigeon.
Death is not the inversion of a cricket.
Death flows in the minds of acacias.
Death dwells in the Pleasant Climate of Mind.
Death speaks of dawn in the Nature of Village Night.
Death goes into the mouth with a bunch of grapes.
Death sings in the larynx of the robin.
Death is responsible for the beauty of butterfly’s wings.
Death sometimes picks basils
Drinks vodka
Sits in the shade, and watches us.
We all know
The Lungs of Pleasure are filled with the oxygen of death.)
Let’s not shut the door to the Living Words of Fate
which we hear from behind the Hedges of Sound.
Let’s pull the curtains
And allow Feeling to have fresh air.
Let’s allow Maturity to dwell under any bush whatsoever.
Let’s allow Instinct to go and cavort
Take off its shoes and leap over
the flowers after the seasons.
Let’s allow Solitude to sing a song.
To write something
To go out in the street.
Let’s be simple
Let’s be simple whether at the bank till or under a tree.
Our mission is not to fathom the secret of the Rose.
Our mission is perhaps
To float in the beauty of the rose.
Let’s pitch our tents beyond Wisdom
Wash our hands in the ecstasy of a leaf and sit to eat
And be born again when the sun rises at dawn.
Let’s unleash our joys
Sprinkle over the perception of space, color,
sound, window and flower.
Set heaven between the two syllables of Being
Fill and refill our lungs with eternity
And unburden Knowledge from the swallow’s shoulders.
Let’s remove the names from the cloud
The plane tree, the mosquito, and the summer.
Let’s climb as high as Love on the Wet Feet of Rain.
Let’s open doors to man, to light, to plants and to insects.
Our mission is perhaps
To run between the Lotus flower and the Century
After the Echo of Truth
Kashan, Chenar Village, Summer 1964