Last week I was driving to work thinking about the classes of the day and how I'd like to be back in bed, trying to keep enough attention on the road not to run into any people or kill any squirrels, and listening with about a fifth of one ear to an interview on NPR about Middle Eastern poetry, when I was suddenly jolted awake by this poem:
It is by a contemporary Iranian poet Hamid Reza Rahimi, and is entitled "A Quarter to Destruction." It was the last line that caught me off guard - after three images of nature doing natural things (albeit without knowing why), unexpectedly the image of the fish, not swimming, but roasting in an incomprehensible drought that focuses the entire world, for the fish, in that inescapable frying pan.
I live like a bird that does not know why it sings, like a tree that does not know why it grows, like a breeze that does not know why it blows, and like a fish that does not know why all the rivers of the world empty in the frying pans.(I don't know where the line breaks are, though I can guess. The text is taken from the transcript on npr.org, where you can listen to the program too.)
It is by a contemporary Iranian poet Hamid Reza Rahimi, and is entitled "A Quarter to Destruction." It was the last line that caught me off guard - after three images of nature doing natural things (albeit without knowing why), unexpectedly the image of the fish, not swimming, but roasting in an incomprehensible drought that focuses the entire world, for the fish, in that inescapable frying pan.
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