under the lush blossoms of the cherry tree
the knees of my lust buckled
and the body with repetition shaken off
fallen from the miraculous blossoms
and among the white bed of the ruins
the luminous embryo of awareness rolled
in the secure nest of my womb
and now without any desire
I feel a universe
breathing inside me
*
clouds pass
shape by shape
trees
color by color
the river is current
and the sky is fluid
even the static mountains
are in fervent motion
everything is current
in a profound stasis
the woods
with a certain order
in the threshold of its disorder
and unwritten rules
can be read on the murals of life
my gaze current in the river of silence
shares a secret with the water’s conscience
all is manifest though dark
all is manifest in its enigma
*
in this world of insecurity
I am faith
how calm I am
in this chaos and anxiety
I will not stay
I will not stay inside
these cold melancholic crypts
I plant a meadow of jasmine
for the owls of desperation
I have hands full of sugarcane
for the bitterness of sorrow
you don’t know . . . do you?
what a moon I hold dear
underneath the dark tent of the night
*
neither night nor day
neither dusk nor dawn
neither an encounter nor a separation
perpetual and in-current
you’re static and profound
a lost one,
evident
a glance
a kindness, silk woven
a golden one
an embodied one
a complete one
an incomplete one
from I feel a universe breathing inside me
Shahin Sadeghzadeh
translated from the Persian by Khashayar Kess Mohammadi
Listen to the original read by the poet:
As translators, we sometimes begin our journey with the greatest aspirations to transform the most technical writing into legible poetry. However, while making the lateral movements between languages, sometimes the hardest challenges pose themselves in the very thought systems bound to each language.
I find Shahin Sadeghzadeh’s work challenging because of its sheer simplicity and how it rebels against language through simple leaps in logic (prevalent in the mystic thought that informs her work) that forces us to rethink language and rewire neural patterns to break past established neural connections.
How a poem comes across at the superfice is as important as its intent, and providing clarity may have been the safe path to follow, but clarity is not where Sadeghzadeh’s poetry shines brightest. The Sufi and mystic thought that informs her work thrives on absurdity, paradox, and surrealism. Sadeghzadeh insists specifically on less conventional word choices, since she believes that by changing simple linguistic rules, the body becomes a site where feelings take place, rid of the ego; an ecology where two metaphysical states—one passing through the body and the other through the self—meet to create the dichotomy of the material versus the spiritual ubiquitous in Sufi thought. Sadeghzadeh’s work moves toward the dissolution of the self into the universal, positing the body as a borrowed vessel for the self. Her poems are simple, but can be quite jarring, and it is precisely in these jarring paradoxes where her poetry is most effective.
It feels extraneous to elaborate so profusely on something simple and burden the reader with an ideological path to follow, since that’s the very habit Sadeghzadeh’s poetry works hard to break. Although her poems take the simplest shapes, they have undergone a most rigorous process in order to convey cultural specificities (and so much needed to be done to convey this, both in the Persian originals and through the process of translation), and are profoundly steeped in the foundations of linguistic thought. Being involved in this project has been simply terrific.
I find Shahin Sadeghzadeh’s work challenging because of its sheer simplicity and how it rebels against language through simple leaps in logic (prevalent in the mystic thought that informs her work) that forces us to rethink language and rewire neural patterns to break past established neural connections.
How a poem comes across at the superfice is as important as its intent, and providing clarity may have been the safe path to follow, but clarity is not where Sadeghzadeh’s poetry shines brightest. The Sufi and mystic thought that informs her work thrives on absurdity, paradox, and surrealism. Sadeghzadeh insists specifically on less conventional word choices, since she believes that by changing simple linguistic rules, the body becomes a site where feelings take place, rid of the ego; an ecology where two metaphysical states—one passing through the body and the other through the self—meet to create the dichotomy of the material versus the spiritual ubiquitous in Sufi thought. Sadeghzadeh’s work moves toward the dissolution of the self into the universal, positing the body as a borrowed vessel for the self. Her poems are simple, but can be quite jarring, and it is precisely in these jarring paradoxes where her poetry is most effective.
It feels extraneous to elaborate so profusely on something simple and burden the reader with an ideological path to follow, since that’s the very habit Sadeghzadeh’s poetry works hard to break. Although her poems take the simplest shapes, they have undergone a most rigorous process in order to convey cultural specificities (and so much needed to be done to convey this, both in the Persian originals and through the process of translation), and are profoundly steeped in the foundations of linguistic thought. Being involved in this project has been simply terrific.
Shahin Sadeghzadeh: “How approximate I am to a small plant, unnamed still, atop a rocky passage, hard to tread. Far from the gaze of passersby; in courtship with the sun, with the soil, with the wind and the rain.”
Khashayar Kess Mohammadi (they/them) is a queer, Iranian-born, Toronto-based poet, writer and translator. They were shortlisted for the 2021 Austin Clarke Prize in Literary Excellence for poetry, 2022’s Arc Poem of the Year award, and The Malahat Review Open Season Awards for poetry. They are also the winner of the 2021 Vallum Poetry Award. They are the author of four poetry chapbooks and three translated poetry chapbooks. They have released two full-length collections of poetry with Gordon Hill Press. Their full-length collaborative poetry manuscript G is forthcoming with Palimpsest Press in fall 2023, and their full-length collection of experimental dream-poems Daffod*ls is forthcoming from Pamenar Press in fall 2023.
