I am the inhabitant of warm lands;

How many seas away from the snow fields!

In the plains, like a blister,

Sets my mud hut;

In the cracked door shutters 

And the near decay of its threshold 

The antiqueness of its architecture 

Is sitting like a desolation. 

The moonlit night of cold countries

Reflected in blue snow 

And veiled in the hangings of its beams 

Comes like a romance;

And the moonlight-lit night of warm lands 

Bearing on its naked back 

The utter silence or the fatigue of work 

Comes like a storm.

The dress of noon-cold countries 

Is such a thin sheet 

In whose folds the gold of the body 

Smiles like electric bulbs;

And our dress, nakedness

On which the sun strikes its beams 

With such anger

That it leaves only an ash heap.

The values of beauty in warm lands 

For how many blind, ancient centuries,

Having kindled the fires of their own bodies, 

And becoming the smoke of their tresses,

Are sitting round their bonfire,

Its flames blazing, 

Burning rosebuds.

The youth of warms lands whose 

Profession is love 

Drive the plow and sow seeds 

In earth burning in sunlight

And then crying over fate.

Ecstatic over their youth labor,

The clusters laden with pearls, 

The more filled up they are,

The more distant they become.

The wave of beauty and love

In cold countries march in step with life,

Like sky and space

Hang over day and night;

In the homes, in places of worship,

Or by the roadside, 

Everywhere, in every place, and at every time 

Whenever beauty and love meet,

The flowers of warn kisses unfold.

How much warmth is there in cold countries?

How much warmth of the body is there 

In cold countries, of souls, of ideas?

Over warm lands a cold and dead silence cast 

Their shadow like a calamity.

The consciousness of life in cold countries

Adorns even a particle of dust.

In warm lands, the feeling of death 

Goes on kicking life.

O friend! In habitant of cold countries, 

Like the killer in the broken ruins 

Of this wasteland, I think:

If I am only what I am,

If I am the debris of my urges,

If I am the grave of my longings.

Then what is the justification of my living? 

O, what is the secret of this helplessness?

I think the moon, which has risen over my house,

Will also peep into your hall.

The earth where I stand 

Is pressing down, rising, bending.

Under the blue ocean,

And, becoming the earth of your country,

Coddle your feet.

I think: Whether my adverse state

Is only the mischief of colors,

Whether I am low only because

The sun burns here,

Whether you are great only because,

From your windowpanes,

When the sunbeam peeps in,

The snow makes fun of it?

Colour and season are not the basis of life; 

Colour is an angle of the sun;

Season, just a facet of earth.

My sun is the colour of my face;

Our snow is the colour of your face;

You pine for my sun;

I am restless for your snow.

We are two travellers—our way is one.

                     .

(Incomplete)

From: Dasht-i vafā (Desert of Fidelity), 2012. p. 259 – 64