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واحهای در لحظه: دربارهی سهراب سپهری و برگردان گزیدهای از اشعارش به فرانسه
دربارهی سهراب سپهری و برگردان گزیدهای از اشعارش به فرانسه
152 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
February 8, 2021
4.5/5
Beautiful, dizzying, mesmerizing.
Sergei Parajanov's The Color of Pomegranates in literary form.
16
A crack in the wall fights off the persistent advances of the sunlight.
Stairs struggle against the Sun’s long leg.
Loneliness fights the song.
Pears ache to fill the empty basket.
Pomegranate’s jewel-seeds refuse to burst under the teeth’s insistence.
Fascists march on the delicate touch-me-nots.
Parrot outdone by eloquence.
Forehead pushes itself against the cold clay prayer tablet.
Mosque tiles unpeel from the walls, flying toward defenseless worshipers.
Wind thrusts apart the rising soap bubbles.
Butterfly-army takes on the Pest Control Program. Dragonfly-swarm versus Water Main Workers.
Regiments of calligraphy pens storm the printshop assaulting the leaden fonts.
Poetry clogs the throat of the poet.
Century undone by a poem.
Orchard beaten by a starling.
Alleyway conquered by two of us saying salaam.
Town defeated by a handful of wooden horsemen.
Every eid conquered by the troop of ceramic dolls.
A baby’s rattle murdered on the mattress.
A story killed at the alley-opening of sleep.
Sorrow done in by song.
Moonlight shot at command of neon-lit night.
Willow tree strangled by order of the government.
17-18
I am close to the beginning of the earth.
I check the pulse of each flower.
I divine water’s wet fate, the tree’s green destiny.
My spirit flows in new directions, following all matter.
My youthful spirit coughs out its longing.
Without other meaningful employment, it spends its days counting raindrops that slowly mark the lines of mortar between the bricks.
My soul is true as a rock in the road.
18-19
Life, that pleasant chore, has wings and feathers wide as Death
and launches itself skyward searching for love.
Life should not be unmoving in our mind like a jar on the habit-shelf, just another little task on the list of things to do.
Life is like the hand that aches to pluck June’s not yet ripe figs.
Like a sycamore refracted in the fly’s myriad eyes.
It is a bat flying in the dark, the migrating bird’s strange directional instinct.
Life is like a train blowing its whistle in the daydreams of the lonely tunnel-bridge.
Like from the airplane’s windows it is a distant garden seen.
Newspaper coverage of a rocket launching spaceward.
21
Our mission is not to unpetal the rose’s layered secret. Maybe our mission is to float, drunk on the mystery of the rose.
Let’s pitch our tents on the other side of the hill from Knowing.
28
Let’s not stir up any mud in the water.
Downstream, a pigeon may be drinking or a thrush in the thicket having a bath.
Or someone in the village filling a pitcher.
Let’s not stir up any mud in the water.
Maybe it flows past the poplar on its way to soothe some lonely soul, or the wandering dervish is there, soaking his dry bread crusts.
63
Into the breathing of my loneliness send splinters of my intelligence.
Send me flying after the kite of that other day.
Take me to the solitude of life’s wan measurements
and show me the presence of soft Nothing.
Beautiful, dizzying, mesmerizing.
Sergei Parajanov's The Color of Pomegranates in literary form.
16
A crack in the wall fights off the persistent advances of the sunlight.
Stairs struggle against the Sun’s long leg.
Loneliness fights the song.
Pears ache to fill the empty basket.
Pomegranate’s jewel-seeds refuse to burst under the teeth’s insistence.
Fascists march on the delicate touch-me-nots.
Parrot outdone by eloquence.
Forehead pushes itself against the cold clay prayer tablet.
Mosque tiles unpeel from the walls, flying toward defenseless worshipers.
Wind thrusts apart the rising soap bubbles.
Butterfly-army takes on the Pest Control Program. Dragonfly-swarm versus Water Main Workers.
Regiments of calligraphy pens storm the printshop assaulting the leaden fonts.
Poetry clogs the throat of the poet.
Century undone by a poem.
Orchard beaten by a starling.
Alleyway conquered by two of us saying salaam.
Town defeated by a handful of wooden horsemen.
Every eid conquered by the troop of ceramic dolls.
A baby’s rattle murdered on the mattress.
A story killed at the alley-opening of sleep.
Sorrow done in by song.
Moonlight shot at command of neon-lit night.
Willow tree strangled by order of the government.
17-18
I am close to the beginning of the earth.
I check the pulse of each flower.
I divine water’s wet fate, the tree’s green destiny.
My spirit flows in new directions, following all matter.
My youthful spirit coughs out its longing.
Without other meaningful employment, it spends its days counting raindrops that slowly mark the lines of mortar between the bricks.
My soul is true as a rock in the road.
18-19
Life, that pleasant chore, has wings and feathers wide as Death
and launches itself skyward searching for love.
Life should not be unmoving in our mind like a jar on the habit-shelf, just another little task on the list of things to do.
Life is like the hand that aches to pluck June’s not yet ripe figs.
Like a sycamore refracted in the fly’s myriad eyes.
It is a bat flying in the dark, the migrating bird’s strange directional instinct.
Life is like a train blowing its whistle in the daydreams of the lonely tunnel-bridge.
Like from the airplane’s windows it is a distant garden seen.
Newspaper coverage of a rocket launching spaceward.
21
Our mission is not to unpetal the rose’s layered secret. Maybe our mission is to float, drunk on the mystery of the rose.
Let’s pitch our tents on the other side of the hill from Knowing.
28
Let’s not stir up any mud in the water.
Downstream, a pigeon may be drinking or a thrush in the thicket having a bath.
Or someone in the village filling a pitcher.
Let’s not stir up any mud in the water.
Maybe it flows past the poplar on its way to soothe some lonely soul, or the wandering dervish is there, soaking his dry bread crusts.
63
Into the breathing of my loneliness send splinters of my intelligence.
Send me flying after the kite of that other day.
Take me to the solitude of life’s wan measurements
and show me the presence of soft Nothing.
April 8, 2020
"Life should not be unmoving in our mind like a jar on the habit-shelf, just another little task of the things to do.
Life is like the hand that aches
to pluck June's not-yet-ripe figs.
Life is like washing a dish.
Like finding silver coins shining in the gutter.
Earth multipled by our heartbeats.
The simple geometry of breath.
Wherever I am, let me be there."
"Let's forget about everything.
Let's pitch our tent on the the other side of the hill of Knowing.
Wash our hands in the leaf's green ecstasy and prepare the picnic.
Let's be reborn when the sun dawns.
Let's unleash everything."
~Selections from "Water's Footfall" by Sohrab Sepehri, tr. from the Persian (Iran) by Kazim Ali and Mohammed Jafar Mahallati / featured in THE OASIS OF NOW: Selected Poems of Sohrab Sepehri, 2013 by BOA Editions.
Sepehri's long-form nature-infused poem "Water's Footfall" was a complete joy to read. This poem is about one-third of the book, and is intoxicating: Sufi mysticism fused with forest bathing and meditation.
Short pieces make up the rest of this collection. Equally beautiful and evocative in theme, bit for me, the long lyric was the favorite. Looking forward to reading more by this well-known Iranian 20th-century poet and artist.
Life is like the hand that aches
to pluck June's not-yet-ripe figs.
Life is like washing a dish.
Like finding silver coins shining in the gutter.
Earth multipled by our heartbeats.
The simple geometry of breath.
Wherever I am, let me be there."
"Let's forget about everything.
Let's pitch our tent on the the other side of the hill of Knowing.
Wash our hands in the leaf's green ecstasy and prepare the picnic.
Let's be reborn when the sun dawns.
Let's unleash everything."
~Selections from "Water's Footfall" by Sohrab Sepehri, tr. from the Persian (Iran) by Kazim Ali and Mohammed Jafar Mahallati / featured in THE OASIS OF NOW: Selected Poems of Sohrab Sepehri, 2013 by BOA Editions.
Sepehri's long-form nature-infused poem "Water's Footfall" was a complete joy to read. This poem is about one-third of the book, and is intoxicating: Sufi mysticism fused with forest bathing and meditation.
Short pieces make up the rest of this collection. Equally beautiful and evocative in theme, bit for me, the long lyric was the favorite. Looking forward to reading more by this well-known Iranian 20th-century poet and artist.
February 8, 2015
One should cross the river,
accompany the far horizon;
one should sometimes settle in the vein of a single
word.
One should cross and eat mulberries from the tip of
the branch.
I was walking on the shores of Lyricism.
It was the rich season, the season of blessings.
And under my feet the sands shifted.
A woman heard and came to the window,
looking out, checking the weather.
So young and so delicately
her hands plucked the dew of minutes
from the body of death’s feelings.
I paused. The sun of Lyricism rose high in the sky.
I pondered the evaporation of dreams,
counting the number of times that branches of a
strange tree
stroke the body of the mind.
We thought we had no margins.
We thought
we were floating amidst legendary debates in the
sacred texts.
And that few seconds of negligence is our present
existence.
accompany the far horizon;
one should sometimes settle in the vein of a single
word.
One should cross and eat mulberries from the tip of
the branch.
I was walking on the shores of Lyricism.
It was the rich season, the season of blessings.
And under my feet the sands shifted.
A woman heard and came to the window,
looking out, checking the weather.
So young and so delicately
her hands plucked the dew of minutes
from the body of death’s feelings.
I paused. The sun of Lyricism rose high in the sky.
I pondered the evaporation of dreams,
counting the number of times that branches of a
strange tree
stroke the body of the mind.
We thought we had no margins.
We thought
we were floating amidst legendary debates in the
sacred texts.
And that few seconds of negligence is our present
existence.
March 7, 2021
My rating isn't for the poems translated in this book but for the fleeting glimpse I've had into the poetry of Sohrab Sepehri, whom I believe is a true original in this world. I came to his work via Iranian cinema and my favourite filmmakers Mohsen Makhmalbaf and Kiarostami, who have both named Sepehri as one of their favourite poets. Kiarostami's film Where Is The Friend's House? is also titled after Sepehri's poem of the same name and is dedicated to him. To encounter Sepehri's poetry is to experience the world constantly shifting beneath your feet via multiple levels of perception, not unlike the elusive self-reflexivity and lyricism that presided over the Iranian New Wave in the 90s.
I can't vouch for the translation of these poems from Persian, which I suspect is rather literal. Take for example the translation of a verse from a poem titled 'Light, Me, Flower, Water':
This same poem is translated as 'Illuminations' by Jerome W. Clinton, which appears in Words Without Borders as:
Make of that what you will. I'll end with one of my favourite poems of his, brought to life in English by yet another translator, Franklin Lewis.
I can't vouch for the translation of these poems from Persian, which I suspect is rather literal. Take for example the translation of a verse from a poem titled 'Light, Me, Flower, Water':
No clouds, no wind--
I crouch at the edge of the garden fountain.
Fish swirling within--light, me, flower, water--
vines overhead with clusters of pure green life hanging down.
This same poem is translated as 'Illuminations' by Jerome W. Clinton, which appears in Words Without Borders as:
A cloudless sky,
no breath of wind,
I sit beside the courtyard pool.
The slow stirrings of the goldfish,
the radiance and I,
the earth and water---
Life clusters in a fresh washed bunch.
Make of that what you will. I'll end with one of my favourite poems of his, brought to life in English by yet another translator, Franklin Lewis.
Toward the Image of the Friend
The moon
was the copper of scriptural gloss
rising like the sorrow of explication
The cypress
a stark cry of the soil
The pine, in close
like a mound of understanding
inking the blank page of the season
The stiff lines of globe thistles
read like Kufic script
The vapors of realization were mustering,
rising from the dark loam-lands
The Friend
touching the nets of awareness
felt the filaments cast over things
He heard the fluid sentence of the stream
It murmured to itself (so it seemed):
There are no words so limpid as this
I was near the rivulet,
thinking:
How clear tonight
the path of ascension for
all things.
June 22, 2018
Superb writing. To be honest, I did not read the third section -- the subject matter did not interest me as much as the first two -- but Sepehri was as insightful and gently elegant as Rumi or Hafiz. His images are not merely clever, they speak of a firm immersion in the wisdom he expresses. With nothing to compare the translation of Kazim Ali and his colleague to, I can't speak with certainty, but the words do flow with such ease and candor that the work seems to have been originally written in English (while it actually was not).
March 20, 2026
[...] Forse è mezzanotte.
Quella è l'Orsa Maggiore: due palmi più in alto del tetto.
Il cielo non è più azzurro, di giorno era azzurro.
Domani devo ricordarmi di andare al giardino di Hasan a comprare pomodori e albicocche secche.
Domani, sul bordo dello stagno, devo ricordarmi di disegnare le capre e le ombre delle scope nell’acqua.
Devo ricordarmi di salvare tutte le farfalle che ci cadono dentro.
Devo ricordarmi di non offendere le leggi della terra.
Domani, sul bordo del ruscello, devo ricordarmi di lavare il mio asciugamano con la radice saponaria.
Devo ricordarmi che sono solo.
La luna è sopra la solitudine.
Quella è l'Orsa Maggiore: due palmi più in alto del tetto.
Il cielo non è più azzurro, di giorno era azzurro.
Domani devo ricordarmi di andare al giardino di Hasan a comprare pomodori e albicocche secche.
Domani, sul bordo dello stagno, devo ricordarmi di disegnare le capre e le ombre delle scope nell’acqua.
Devo ricordarmi di salvare tutte le farfalle che ci cadono dentro.
Devo ricordarmi di non offendere le leggi della terra.
Domani, sul bordo del ruscello, devo ricordarmi di lavare il mio asciugamano con la radice saponaria.
Devo ricordarmi che sono solo.
La luna è sopra la solitudine.
January 22, 2026
Closer to 3 rather then 2, it started slow however I could see why it was so praised at the middle, towards the end I felt it had fallen in quality in a few places, still good and the notes explained some of the translation issues and the wider context of some poems. I think in part I'm missing out on the cultural context of the poems so they didn't have the same impact on me while I could see the hype of a few of them it wasn't enough for the rest.
September 10, 2020
"I will reconcile, understand, walk on.
I will drink light
I will love."
Even that I do not speak Persian, I think that it is difficult to find good translations of Persian poetry. This is an excellent translation of sublime poetry.
I will drink light
I will love."
Even that I do not speak Persian, I think that it is difficult to find good translations of Persian poetry. This is an excellent translation of sublime poetry.
January 8, 2022
Dazzling; demands to be savored.
"One should cross the river,
accompany the far horizon;
one should sometimes settle in the vein of a single word."
"One should cross the river,
accompany the far horizon;
one should sometimes settle in the vein of a single word."
Read
April 16, 2022"𝘐𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘮𝘦,
𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘴𝘰𝘧𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘲𝘶𝘪𝘦𝘵𝘭𝘺, 𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘤𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘬 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘨𝘭𝘢𝘴𝘴 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘵
𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘤𝘶𝘱𝘴 𝘮𝘺 𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴."
𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘴𝘰𝘧𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘲𝘶𝘪𝘦𝘵𝘭𝘺, 𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘤𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘬 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘨𝘭𝘢𝘴𝘴 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘵
𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘤𝘶𝘱𝘴 𝘮𝘺 𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴."
July 4, 2022
5 stars because it made me cry my brains out. The book itself is thin and easy to carry off somewhere quiet
November 13, 2024
Wonderful book of poetry, recommend.
June 9, 2015
I loved this book. A thoughtfulness in nearly every line that surprises with its insight and beauty. The final section, "The Traveller," is not as strong as the first two, which make up the bulk of the book, but that's a quibble in light of this deeply stirring collection.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews