By Mohammad-Ali Sepanlou, translated by Danial Haghighi.
… But the Tehran being is
contingent upon many invisible beings.
Varieties of solitude are histories of this land;
An attic of occult affairs’ verity
A distillation of the crowd’s extract—an heirloom of four species of us
A bundle of newfangled intellectual fruits
An orchestra of aspiration-and-famine melody
The fine music of a thousand-string instrument
With a touch of neuroticism.
An ivory tower with four eyes
across every eight corners of the universe
that is the surveilling observant of the most remote precincts:
From here,
mountainous Alborz heights—the dragon jail—
to there,
earthquake likelihood—the faun’s notions—
terrain memories figured into his daydreams.
Having placed a mirror facing the sun,
while blinking
through millions of sharp eyes,
saucers translate rainbow messages of the skies:
“Single, every single citizen,
under the smoky air
singing the lost love song;
lo, genial sky-wearer
it is the downhearted’s comfort zone.”
“Behold!
It’s a Tehran of irreducible people”, the sun blinks.
The jovial being of this megalopolis
sprung from a collective free will. ∎