Which window, which morning
Would interpret the sea’s long, dark, frowning and confused dream?
I heard from the lips of the leaf
This green tongue,
In the mid-night dream,
That had washed its hymn in the creek:
In your loss, o, you robust tree,
The blessed sign of existence within oneself!
And we were not even spared time to cry.
I saw the first break of dawn, coupled with the blood of freshness,
In the slumber of your leaves.
I heard the first chirping of the morning birds,
The awake brightness of the creek,
In your blossoming.
The winds saw those sacred leaves and branches,
That this year and the other macabre years
Wore down under the shade of your incarceration.
The wall, the endless wall of your solitude,
Or the ancient wall of my hesitations,
Did not let your branches shine in the dawn’s laughter
Nor did they even allow the miserable doves,
Those who grieved for the death of the flower,
A month earlier and shed so many tears,
Moan for your silent elegy.
Even if there is no body outside this cage,
Even if nobody says a word across that shore,
As to which generous dawn bestowed this wave of light
Over the thirsty palm trees in the Sahara, Yemen, Eden.
But I am ashamed to glance in the dark, murky mirror!
Oh, in your silence, you robust tree,
The blessed sign of living within one’s existence
To blossom and transcend,
To be fertile within oneself,
To develop roots within one’s own soil.
And we were not spared time to cry for you.

Translated from the Persian by Abdollah Zahiri

Translator’s Note

This poem, composed by Mohammad Reza Shafi’i Kadkani, a towering poet, critic, and academic, is a tribute to Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, who was toppled by a CIA-MI6 led coup that restored the Shah to power on August 19, 1953. This coup toppled a democratically elected government that had nationalized the oil industry in 1951 in a rare anti-colonial move. This nationalist movement sent a ripple across the Middle East, Asia, and Africa that galvanized independence movements.

It is largely believed that this rupture in Iranian history precipitated the 1979 Revolution in less than three decades. Shafi’i Kadkani in a note preceding the poem itself reminisces the conditions that prompted him to jot the poem:

I was ambivalent towards Mossadegh: there was both anger and praise. There was often praise and less of anger and doubt. Until one day when afternoon papers were out, the daily Kaihan had a small note on the front page about Mossadegh’s death. I stared at the paper and burst into crying loudly. My friend Reza Sayyid Hosseini pulled me over and said “Quiet, they will come and arrest us.” I kept wailing until I got home, sat down and wrote the following poem in his loss.