Iranian Poet and painter
Click here to read more Sepehri poetry translated into French.
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Sepehri, Sohrab
The Primal Call
Where are my shoes
who was it that called Sohrab
the voice was familiar, as is air with the body of a leaf
mother is sleeping
so are Manutchehr and Parvaneh, and maybe
everybody in town
it is a summer night, an elegy quietly passing
over the moments
and a cool breeze is sweeping my sleep
along the green edges of the blanket
there is a smell of migration
my pillow is stuffed with the songs of the swallows.
Morning will come
and the sky will migrate
into this water bowl,
I must go tonight.
I spoke through the openest window with the people
in
this land
but I heard no word of the stuff of times
no eye glanced lovingly at the earth
nobody was fascinated by a garden
nobody took the magpie in the field seriously.
I feel as gloomy as a cloud
when I see Hoori
- that is our neighbor's mature girl -
under the rarest elm on the earth
studying theology.
But there are some things, some high moments
( I saw a woman poet, for example
so absorbed in space
that the sky laid eggs in her eyes,
also one night
a man asked me
how long it takes to reach the rising grapes. )
I must go tonight
I must pack the suitcase
which has enough room for my robe of solitude
and must go where
I can see epical trees
towards that wordless enormity which keeps calling me.
Somebody again called Sohrab
where are my shoes ?
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Bodhi
There was a special moment,
All doors were open.
No leaves, no branches,
The garden of annihilation had appeard.
Birds of places were silent,
This silent, that silent,
The silence itself was utterance.
What was that area?
Seems a ewe and a wolf,
Standing side by side. (1)
The shape of the sound, pale
The voice of the shape, weak
Was the curtain folded?
I was gone, he was gone,
We had lost us.
The beauty was alone.
Every river had become a sea,
Every being had become a Buddha.
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The Foot Steps Of Water
Life's a pleasant tradition.
Life's wing is as vast as death.
Life's a jump the size of love.
Life's not something,
we put on the mantel of habit
and forget.
It does not matter where I am.
The sky is always mine.
Windows, ideas, air, love,
earth, all mine.
Why does it matter if sometimes,
the mushrooms of nostalgia grow?
Let's take off our clothes.
Water is just a foot away.
Let's have a basket and
fill it up with all the greens
and all the reds.
We are not to comprehend;
the secret of roses, but maybe
swiming in the incantation of roses.
Or may be looking for
the song of truth
between the morning glory,
and the century.
Painting by Sohrab Sepehri
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