Sohrab Sepehri was born in Kashan on October 7, 1928; a very talented artist and a gifted poet, Sepehri came to prominence with the publication of The Water’s Footfall which was subsequently followed by The Traveler and The Green Volume. Sepehri died of blood cancer in Tehran in 1980. Sepehri is so popular with the Iranians that he is usually known by his first name ‘Sohrab.’ Sohrab traveled beyond the normal trajectory of everyday meanings. He translated speech into a language hitherto unknown to the Iranians. A pioneer poet, he utilized western forms and deconstructed the normal way of poetry. His use of new forms in poetry makes him complicated to understand. Yet, readers find themselves so attached to him and his poetry that there remains no room for boredom. Readers are so immersed in his poetry that they sometimes forget the world of realities for an instant and experience a fresh recognition of man and the whole universe. Well-versed in Buddhism, mysticism and western traditions, he mingled the western concepts with eastern ones, thereby creating a kind of poetry unsurpassed in the history of Persian literature. To him, new forms are new means to express his thoughts and feelings. His poetry is, indeed, like a journey. Every time you read him you understand him differently. There is a bottomless ocean of meanings in his poetry. Sohrab takes us into a journey of an unknown world where ugly things become beautiful and despised objects become a center of attention to the readers. In his worldview, beauty is not an abstract concept; it is created and strengthened by people. He follows Shakespeare in that there is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so. Therefore, he invites us to wash our eyes and view the world differently.
Morning glory
Past the border of my dream
The shadow of a morning glory
Had darkened all these ruins
What intrepid wind
Transported the morning glory seed to the land of my Nod?
Beyond glass gates of dream
In the bottomless marsh of mirrors
Wherever I had taken a piece of myself
A morning glory had sprouted
Forever pouring into the void of my soul
And in the sound of its blossoming
I was forever dying in myself
The veranda roof caves in
And the morning glory twines about all columns
What intrepid wind
Transports this morning glory seed to the land of my Nod?
The morning glory germinates
Its stem rising out of my transparent sleep
I was in a dream
Flood of wakefulness overflowed.
To the view of my dream ruins I opened eyes:
The morning glory had twined all about my life.
I was flowing in its veins
It rooted in me
It was all of me
What intrepid wind
Transported this morning glory seed to the land of my Nod?