دیدار از دیوار

Visiting the Wall

by Majid Naficy

We climbed the Great Wall of China
And reached the second watchtower
Where a narrow, dark minaret
Joined the blue sky in a balcony.
There, I saw three poets of Tang dynasty:
Wang Wei, the monk,
Li Bo, the mystic
And Du Fu, the sage.
They were looking at the deep valley
From the top of the balcony.
I told them that I have read Sutra
And have heard scattered narratives
Of Lao Tse and Confucius,
And yet, since my adolescence
I have only been attached to their poetry
Which, like the cypress of Chu-Ko Liang temple,
Has deep, ancient roots.
All three remained silent.
And only Du Fu smiled.


Then we descended the mountain
Sat on a stone seat in a tavern
And ordered a jug of rice wine
With a basket of fragrant lychees.
While a pet cricket
Was silent in his gourd cage,
I recited Du Fu's "Great Wall" poem
For my traveling companion:
"Riding horses, advancing in the blizzard
A pale line of people climb the mountain.
At their posts, they grab dangerous cliffs
Feeling ice sheets under their fingers.
They have left their homelands long ago
And don't know when their forced labor is over.
At sunset, they envy the clouds floating toward the south:
Can these clouds carry our messages back home?"


Finally, from an Uyghur girl peddler,
Who had almond-shaped eyes
Like Afaq, the love of the Persian poet Nezami,
We bought Great Wall t-shirts.
Alas! After the first wash
The wall disappeared
And all of our underwear
Became tinged with a red memory.


July 30, 2011

http://www.iranian.com/main/2011/sep/visiting-wall