Liam
Administrator
H. E. Sayeh (born Hushang Ebtehaj, 192 is a famous Iranian poet of the 20th century, "whose life and work spans many of Iran's political, cultural and literary upheavals." Having spent a year in prison (for his writings) after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Sayeh subsequently moved to Germany with his family. His poetry is described as "highly emotional" and "always remarkable for its convincing directness and unconcealed sentiment."
His full-length collections include the following volumes:
*
Migration
A sketch the rain strikes
in dirt, one uncertain runnel
depicting the dark story of a cloud—
a vagrant cloud, driven over mountain and plain
until one day, in whatever stream it finds itself,
it is returned to the sea.
*
A False Dawn
Night still hasn't passed.
Oh, prodigious patience, stay—
without you, I don't have the will to live.
The splendor of a false dawn might dupe us.
The seasoned rooster knows
this is not the time for singing.
*
Sunset on the Green
Tell me under dusk the grieving green of meadows.
This sadness of tousled grasses, tell.
Look to ashen dreams of the arghavaan tree,
Wordlessly confess the thoughts of the burned.
What became of her face leaned on the young tree sprout?
Tell the dirt's embrace. Tell the solitude of the rose.
The joy of first green left the old tree's memory.
Please, spring wind, tell of those days.
Water won't return to a dry creek bed.
Let wet eyes tell of the thirst of the jasmine.
Tell the crowds struck silent with sadness
Of the serving girls' festivals of morning wine.
Tell of the messenger, a hundred flowers on his chest
And this wave of blood that slaps him on the mouth.
The broken pine sketched my heart on the water.
Tell this story to the heart-breaker mirror.
That green and red shadow turned amethyst and bruise.
My dark pine, tell of sunset on the green.
*
The word "shadow" in the penultimate line is a play on the author's name: Sayeh means "shadow" in Persian.
His full-length collections include the following volumes:
- The First Songs (1946)
- Mirage (1951)
- Bleak Travails I (1953)
- Nocturnal (1953)
- Earth (1955)
- Pages from the Longest Night (1965)
- Bleak Travails II (1973)
- Until the Dawn of the Longest Night (1981)
- Memorial to the Blood of the Cypress (1981)
- Bleak Travails III (1985)
- Bleak Travails IV (1992)
- Mirror in Mirror (1995)
- Dispirited (2006)
*
Migration
A sketch the rain strikes
in dirt, one uncertain runnel
depicting the dark story of a cloud—
a vagrant cloud, driven over mountain and plain
until one day, in whatever stream it finds itself,
it is returned to the sea.
*
A False Dawn
Night still hasn't passed.
Oh, prodigious patience, stay—
without you, I don't have the will to live.
The splendor of a false dawn might dupe us.
The seasoned rooster knows
this is not the time for singing.
*
Sunset on the Green
Tell me under dusk the grieving green of meadows.
This sadness of tousled grasses, tell.
Look to ashen dreams of the arghavaan tree,
Wordlessly confess the thoughts of the burned.
What became of her face leaned on the young tree sprout?
Tell the dirt's embrace. Tell the solitude of the rose.
The joy of first green left the old tree's memory.
Please, spring wind, tell of those days.
Water won't return to a dry creek bed.
Let wet eyes tell of the thirst of the jasmine.
Tell the crowds struck silent with sadness
Of the serving girls' festivals of morning wine.
Tell of the messenger, a hundred flowers on his chest
And this wave of blood that slaps him on the mouth.
The broken pine sketched my heart on the water.
Tell this story to the heart-breaker mirror.
That green and red shadow turned amethyst and bruise.
My dark pine, tell of sunset on the green.
*
The word "shadow" in the penultimate line is a play on the author's name: Sayeh means "shadow" in Persian.