It was evening—
And one could hear the sound
of the minds of plants
The traveller arrived, and sat
on an easy-chair
beside the lawn
And the lines of the road were lost
in the sorrow of the meadows
*
What strange valleys!
And the horse—do you remember?
It was white
And it grazed upon the green silence of the plains
like a pure word
*
Neither these fragrant minutes that grow silent
on nârenj branches
Nor the honesty of these words that lie
between the silence of two leaves
of a wallflower—
Nothing could release me from
the silent rush
of the surroundings
*
The traveller’s glance fell upon the table
He said:
“What beautiful apples!
Life thirsts for solitude”
And the host asked:
“What is beautiful?”
Beautiful is
the love-struck interpretation
of images
Excerpts from “The Traveller” by Sohrab Sepehri