Bijan Elahi – searchable text

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Death Announcement 1

What’s up? The death of a lonely world
its mind dormant, its beloved gone.
Soul of all souls, where to? Beyond where?
He addressed the star of the dawn sarcastically.

What’s up? Demise of the heart. No flowers rising
from the earth to taste the celestial mystery.
Without the grace of the air, tears of a cloud,
the grief of fresh tulips was renewed.

What’s up? The death of He is the Truth, the One, the He!
Birds have grown dumb, forgotten their songs
so the dumb ones with ten duplicitous tongues
display their inebriated coquetry, their showy manifestations.

Death Announcement 2

What’s up? The death of all address, apostrophe, edict.
All speech makers have let down their shields:
a flame has been lit, what response now
how would a tree begin to breathe? 

What’s up? As He began to draw the bow of an ogling,
happy tidings spread from the jasmine to the grass,
the honey hive shrank and nobody saw an impress
but dust upon the garden’s pages.  

To heave out the smoke of a heartfelt pain,
the dew disappeared, no memory was left of the rosebud:
thank God that some idea was left of the purity of paradise,
of that Night of All Light.

Death Announcement 3

The story was renewed but my mind was not refreshed.
What’s the use? None! The fair ones of the garden
have now departed, and love has arisen sweetly,
wrapped in the tinsel of a brand-new vision.

The world has turned into a desert, no beginning, no end
Filled with countless flies, a whole horde of asses
who mingle, speak, see, and hear, putting airs on display,
repeating: ‘wonderful, well-done, bravo.’