Window, Clock, Rain by Mohammad-Ali Sepanlou, translated by Siavash Saadlou
Translation
Window, Clock, Rain by Mohammad-Ali Sepanlou
Translated by Siavash Saadlou
“Desperately searching, next to a window / of plants and weariness and patina, lies / an unspoken thought—the utterly undisclosed / sound of the earth; full of remembrance”
Window, Clock, Rain
by Mohammad-Ali Sepanlou
Translated by Siavash Saadlou
Beside the moon’s window
lost alphabets have been woven
into the convoluted net of day and night.
Between destitution and loss,
between hurtling and malaise,
there are gaps that suddenly point
to the time of poetry—the lifeless time
of literature—and sit at the doorway.
Desperately searching, next to a window
of plants and weariness and patina, lies
an unspoken thought—the utterly undisclosed
sound of the earth; full of remembrance,
replete with revelation, with interwoven
words that birth patterns within
the textile of tireless times.
There is a threadbare mat protecting
the light of cold thirst, the curled-up coil
of a poem that’s the gurgling flow of water
in the throat of time, stockpiling
patchy letters of the chalice
in the assonance of its voice.
Beside the window rains this running
unspoken thought, and the frame
of the clock’s body shows numbers
and steps and time.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mohammad-Ali Sepanlou, an Iranian poet, essayist, and literary critic, was born in 1940. Nicknamed the Poet of Tehran for his evocative panegyrics on Iran’s capital, Sepanlou published more than sixty volumes of poetry and essays. He was also a founding member of the Writers’ Association of Iran. Sepanlou was the recipient of several distinctions, including Legion de Honneur and Le prix Max-Jacob. He died in May 2015, aged seventy-four.
AUTHOR PHOTO BY Hossein Velayati for Mehr News Agency
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Siavash Saadlou is a writer and literary translator whose works of fiction, creative nonfiction, and criticism have appeared in Plenitude Magazine, Southeast Review, and Minor Literature[s], among other journals. His poetry has recently been anthologized in Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and Its Diaspora (Green Linden Press). Saadlou is also the recipient of the 55th Cole Swensen Prize for Translation. He holds an MFA in creative writing from Saint Mary’s College of California.
FEATURED IMAGE by Morteza Delgir
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