Who is this “great king”?
Is he a worthy king, who deserves
the power he has been granted?
I know he is worthy, because you wait
for him, through bright autumn and
“cruel winter”. I trust his grasp
of power, because I trust you. When you
bow to this king, I will bow too…
But more than kings and their power,
we have love: I love the “weeping willow”
in your garden. I know its loneliness is
really its desire to love all loving things.
It will not be a whole thing until we declare,
“O blessed willow, you are the emblem,
the symbol of the holiness of our future
existence.” Its loneliness is the impatience
of a love that cannot yet embrace all that it loves.
We live still in a world of partial happiness.
We live still in a world that a great king must protect,
We live still in a world where only the rare willow flourishes.
But deep under the earth, where all the waters flow together,
where all the roots are entangled in one life, where we are
are all one immense soul, there, there is born Our Life Eternal.
(This poem is a response to Baharak Barzin’s wonderful
visionary poem, “Attesta.”)
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