Abolghasem Esmailpour: Elegies

1

The world doesn’t end inside newspapers

Let me weave the galaxy’s final poem

In my thoughts

The shade of blossoms

2

Grasslands grazing poems

The gates silent

Candles constantly extinguished

The walls frozen

3

How the graves are silent!

My bones awake

Weighing the shadows of my inner soul

Upon the waves of the sea

4

Count the corpses

Till the moon

Sings an elegy

Over the graves

  Translated from the Persian by the author

Poet—mythologist—soothsayer—Abolghasem Esmailpour was born in 1954 in Babol, Iran, near the shores of the Caspian Sea. A brilliant scholar, he resides as Professor of Ancient Culture and Languages at Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran, pursuing the myths running through Mesopotamia, Babylonia, Assyria, and Persia.

Works include: Manichaean Gnosis and Creation Myth; The Hymns of Light; Symbolic Expression: A Handbook of Persian Literature; and the poetry collections Moments: New Gnostic Songs, Each Grain of Sand, In Front of the Cherry-Tree, and Beyond the River of the Day.

Abolghasem Esmailpour resides in Tehran.