Khaju Kerman Park Poem by Denis Mair

This park is a nook of many nooks
Set in rock so humans can draw near
And grow friendly with the mountain
Nooks for all flavors of contemplation
Nooks as theaters for conversation
A secret system of water ducts
Lets greenery adorn each rocky scene
As if by handiwork of jinns
I stroll the rocky promenade at twilight
In velvety air I heed a realm beneath silence
Where a poet's heart-sounds echo forever

On Hafiz Day the big heart of Iran
Opens to let me walk in Khaju Kerman Park
I gaze across the highway at a sister mountain
Its massiveness mirrors the size of this one
Above that massif, the moon lights up a cloudscape
Wreaths of silvery cloud are just as intricate
As whorls and fissures of any monolith
Each realm has been given a scale of time
To develop its own panoply of forms
Between cloudscape and landscape I walk in reverie
May our human works last longer than clouds
May we gracefully make way for people to come
Like travelers going out the gate towards Esfahan
Where a holy book was once kept upstairs
We are all passing through a gate
Beneath the arcane book of Heaven
Wherein the scales of all realms are written

On this day dedicated to a poet
May my thoughts find a fitting place
Here where my kind cavort amid greenery
Along this edge of massive rock
On stone paths hewn by selfless hands

Oct.12,2011 in Shiraz/ Nov.22 in Beijing