Green Destiny

I am close to the beginning of the earth.
I check the pulse of each flower.
I divine water's wet fate,
the tree's green destiny.

My spirit flows in new directions,
following all matter. . . .
My soul is true as a rock in the road.

I have never seen two spruce trees at war.
Never seen the willow subletting its shade to the earth.
The elms offer their branches to the crows rent-free.

Wherever there is a leaf, I bloom.
The poppy rinses me clean in the bath of Being.
As can the wings of a housefly I also can measure dawn's weight.
Like a vase, I listen to the music growing.
Like fruit in the basket I have a fever to ripen.

– Sohrab Sepehri
Excerpted from "Water's Footfall"
as published in The Oasis of Now:
Selected Poems of Sohrab Sepehri
(translated from the Persian by Kazim Ali
and Mohammad Jafar Mahallati)
pp. 20-21

Images: Michael J. Bayly (Minnehaha Creek and its surrounding parkway – Minneapolis, April 2017).

Text: Sohrab Sepehri. (For another excerpt from "Water's Footfall," click here.)


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Spring: "Truly the Season for Joy and Hope"
• The Enkindled Spring
• Celebrating the Return of Spring
• Springtime by the Creek
• Spring's Wintry Surprise
• Considering Resurrection
• Let the Greening Begin . . .
• Dreaming of Spring
• A Springtime Prayer
• In the Footsteps of Spring