On A Journey With The Winds - Excerpts (Translation) Poem by Erhard Hans Josef Lang

A butterfly dancing around its own self
Without destination
In the lovely warmth of spring

A spider's
Work of two days
Being torn into pieces,
As the old servant swings her broom

In the eyes of the moon:
Are these who are watching the moon tonight,
The same as those from
A thousand years ago?

From amidst a hundred stones
Smaller and bigger ones,
All by herself a tortoise is
Moving about -
What a pitiable sight:
The old tortoise does not see
The little bird's
Effortless flight -
How can a senior tortoise have been
Living for three centuries
Without the knowledge of the sky?

A woman in child bed,
Up and awake
Together with five daughters,
Her husband dreaming -
The pregnant woman is
Weeping without a noise
On the bed of her husband with a dream vision. -
A woman, awake,
Next to a man with a dream,
The heart having let go of the hope for embrace

A watch is coming to
A standstill
On the wrist of a blind man -
The blind man inquiring the time
From a schoolboy

Inside a holy centre
I reflected on a thousand thoughts.
When I came out,
It had snowed.

I shout
Across a deep valley.
Waiting for the echo.

When thinking proper,
I don't understand why the
Snow is so white -,
When thinking proper,
I don't understand why
Death is feared
So much

On nothing I am relying
As much, as on
The closing of the night
And that of the day

A child's crying is
Seconded by a bird tweedling,
Until its mother will arrive on the scene

A small mound with
Reject tires,
A wretched dog there to look after,
Without any returns.

Which leaf will next
Drop down,
Along with the following gust of wind?

Nights
Long
Days
Long
Life
Short


from On a Journey with the Winds by
Abbas Kiarostami
(Iranian film producer and poet)

translated by Erhard Hans Josef Lang