Outlandia
There’s an essence to Outlandia
it has everything your loving heart
might desire.
No, the air here is not that polluted
and the water is wholesome.What is more
reason rules here, in all matters.
People abide by their laws
and the laws are made for the people:
reflecting a combination
of reason and experience,
and there are structures here
open, flexible
that resist underground tremors,
the trembling that warns of abrupt shifts and changes.
Not only its cities,
its villages too
are well cared for,
and its history: –
rub off greed and blood, conquest and cruelty from its surface,
and it begins to reflect the human yearning for freedom.Why is it then, O God
that here too, in this paradise,
happiness is still my forbidden fruit?Over many years in a place that is not mine
I have learned a thousand points, as we say,
“finer than a hair”.
like the feeling that this land
would not let you be its master and lord,
that you cannot but be a beggar at its door,
not in those words, of course,
but as an univited guest,
seated at a table
of condescending hospitality
where some helping hand
has invited
multitudes of prideless outsiders
stripped of self-respect.I now see
as clearly as can be
that happiness is
contemplating your creation: –
seeing the mark
of your hand
upon a door
or a wall
on a rose-petal,
on a falling leaf,
in any paltry thing.Nowhere in this paradise, though
– need I say it –
have my hands planted or set anything in place
not a rose-bush
nor a brick or building block,
neither in a rose-garden
nor in a wall around a home.I look around me
and I see
that no human edifice
standing in Outlandia
holds a mark from me.
And thus I decree:
nothing
here
belongs to me.Yes, Outlandia may be paradise on earth
a place where no one minds what you do
yet, alas
this is also the land
where no one cares what you do!
And here
among those throngs so much minding
their work and their world
I find no mate for my soul
to whisper to her heart
my wish for the hour
to say farewell
to this paradise
– and to go back home –
to my own hell.[London, 1997]
Translated by Ahmad Karimi-HakkakMichael C Beard
Page(s) 184-186
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