Today, a Waterfall
Slippery along the rocky ridges of my throat, spring water floods the crystalline base of my heart . . .
Slippery along the rocky ridges of my throat, spring water floods the crystalline base of my heart . . .
I am studying Creative Writing at the University of Arizona and, in a nod to my heritage, I am learning Persian as a second language. As part of the department’s end-of-year Persian showcase, my professor invited me to translate a contemporary Iranian poem into English and learn the original poem in Persian.
Because of how timeless the poem is and how poignant its message is even today, I hope you will enjoy this translation of Sohrab Sepehri’s poem آب را گل نکنیم, or Let us not Muddy the Water.
It’s day six in Mexico and the coffee jar is empty. We walk down the dusty road to the restaurant as the sun cries in the ocean behind us, the beautiful ocean, seagulls crying . . .
He holds the world in his stomach. He holds a pomegranate that he breaks with hands the size of my feet . . .
I tied twilight in bunches with rosemary from the rafters. In summer I brewed it between copper and winter . . .
Coffee brews thick and foamy today with hints of equinox in the cream. It is a morning to sit and mourn with summer dew as sun sweeps the grass dry and the hydrangea flowers reach for September . . .
I did not ask you to pull me from the water. You wrested me to coastline where sand cut my flesh and the sunrise made my blood scream . . .
Last night the moon rose electric in the sky. Fingernail sliver of warm yellow streetlight almost swallowed by midnight earth . . .
Last night the moon rose in an inky sky and I watched the stars blink into being one by one over the expanse of a glittering city . . .