|
|
The Sound of the Footstep By Nader Naderpour Los Angeles, November 1991. Translated by Farhad Mafie June 1996. From the collection Earth and Time (Zamin va Zaman).
In
the large desert I am going through the
heavy steps of someone, in the heart of night, travel
with me and my shadow. When
I look back timorously nobody
is there except the wind and the tree, one
drunk, the other out of touch. Exasperated,
I ask myself: if
the one who accompanies me is not Satan, then
who is it whom I cannot see? No
answer, the desert is empty, the
mountain behind the tree is all alone. And
what I hear is: The
sound of someone’s weighty footsteps Who
is closest to me. My
eye, once again endeavoring
to find its identity, is
looking toward what is behind: The
moon on the depths of the horizon is
like a mask which the sun has pulled over its face till
in the heart of the night it starts its banditry again. I
am telling myself: This
is the same thing that every night travels
toward the end of the world with me. Ah,
you, the fallen shadow on the earth! If,
during the shining of the dawn, you
still continue walking along with me: The
footsteps of thousands of nights with
footsteps of hundreds of days you
would see on earth. This
sight would tell you that
this body, the sounds of whose footstep frightened you, is "death" in the form of another day.
Copyright
© 2003 by Farhad Mafie. All
rights reserved. No reprint, duplication, or distribution of this material in any form is allowed without written permission. For information, please contact Farhad Mafie at Mafie@att.net or at (949) 851-1714. |