The Open Tome

Saeed Tavanaee Marvi

my room
NO
my prison
love is my prison

in the room a female voice is heard from the television whispering “didn’t you seek this prison all your life?” and then continuing with certainty: “now these walls are real”

the female voice stops. so does the sad background music. we are now in the OceanDweller’s cabin. normal voices of the cabin are heard: beakers clinking, plexiglass implements moving around. the sound of steam, the sound of picking up and putting down a book. The OceanDweller narrates the story of a father who has interwoven the reality of war with fiction:

they were from a planet far far away
a planet unknown to us
they were a man and a woman
they came as saviours of light
the man did not have wings
the woman did
the woman had carried the man to this planet
to scribe inside the open tome
the open tome was our destiny
the fate of light battling darkness

the cacophony of war: human screams drowning in explosions. the story continues.

War had dried up all the ink on the pages
every day the scripture grew pale
the man had come to once again
overwrite the chronicles of light
so light can remain
since it was only in light
that humanity was possible
and they were the only ones who knew
the man wrote upon the opened pages
and the woman looked down upon the man
from another planet
holding two brilliant blue flowers
by a window without walls
love was a bridge between dark voids in space
invisible rings that traversed and connected
the man only thought of her
the woman only looked at him

and what is it that gnaws at your heart so?
gnaws at your bitter roots and the deadly moment that follows
the moment of separating hands, eyes, and hearts
following a deadly hesitation
and hesitation was deadly
and the man lingered
and got lost in time

time stopped for the woman
but it kept on going for the man
war was rekindled
the man must pass oceans of time
to arrive at a barnacled cliff

early morning
when it’s time to sleep
I say to myself
“I hope I dream a pleasant dream”
but I’m haunted by nightmares
neither you nor your likeness
ever visits my dreams
strange faces, strange places
I am estranged from my own dreamscapes
I often feel I’ve mistaken myself for someone else
nothing is familiar, even the shape of my fingers
doubt has seeped into my being
nothing is separate from anything
borders have blurred into the all-encompassing
wherever I am can be anywhere
my memories have become encrypted
and there’s no one left to remind me
of my words, mannerisms, habits or even my favorite food
I think I once heard from a radio station that
“you have tuned in to the spiritual capital of Iran”
here everything is constantly changing
streetspeoplewordsmemoriestastes
smellsroomsdreamsdayslovesshops
vicesandvirtuesfriendshipsenmities
poems
nightmares
realities

translated from the Persian by Khashayar Kess Mohammadi

Read the original in Persian

Listen to the radio-play style recording read in the original Persian by the author:

What I enjoy about Saeed's poetry is how infinitely expansive and almost unbearably delicate his poetic voice is. Saeed's poetry always hits emotional highs, but this poem specifically remains in constant conversation with world poetry, in a manner that is incredibly introspective yet unpretentious. I tried to introduce stylistic changes within the poetic form in order to transmit the same sense of narrative and of emotional movement from one section to another. This poem was translated under the supervision of Saeed, himself a great translator from English to Farsi, and his experience with translation helped the process greatly.

Saeed Tavanaee Marvi is a poet and translator born in the city of Mashhad, Iran, in 1983. His books include The Woman With Chlorophyllic Eyes (Rozane press, 2020), several translations of the works of Sherman Alexie, and a translation of Richard Brautigan’s Tokyo Montana Express (Rozane press, 2020).

Khashayar Kess Mohammadi (they/them) is a queer, Iranian-born, Toronto-based poet, writer and translator. They were shortlisted for the 2021 Austin Clarke Prize in Literary Excellence for poetry, 2022’s Arc Poem of the Year award, and The Malahat Review Open Season Awards for poetry. They are also the winner of the 2021 Vallum Poetry Award. They are the author of four poetry chapbooks and three translated poetry chapbooks. They have released two full-length collections of poetry with Gordon Hill Press. Their full-length collaborative poetry manuscript G is forthcoming with Palimpsest Press in fall 2023, and their full-length collection of experimental dream-poems Daffod*ls is forthcoming from Pamenar Press in fall 2023.