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Farsi/Persian

Self

 

WHO am I, who

Speaks from the dust,

Who looks from the clay?

Who hears

For the mute stone,

For fragile water feels

With finger and bone?

 

Who for the forest breathes the evening,

Sees for the rose,

Who knows What the bird sings?

 

Who am I, who for the sun fears

The demon dark,

In order holds Atom and chaos?

 

Who out of nothingness has gazed

On the beloved face?

 

 

 

Two Invocations of Death

 

Death, I repent

Of these hands and feet

That for forty years

Have been my own

And I repent

Of flesh and bone,

Of hair and skin

Rid me, death,

Of face and form,

Of all that I am.

 

And I repent

Of the forms of thought,

The habit of mind

And heart crippled

By long-spent pain,

The memory-traces

Faded and worn

Of vanished places

And human faces

Not rightly seen

Or understood,

Rid me, death,

Of the words I have used.

 

Not this or that

But all is amiss

That I have done,

And I have seen

Sin and sorrow

Befoul the world

Release me, death,

 

Forgive, remove,

From place and time

The trace of all

That I have been