به یک نگارگر سبز – شعری از مجید نفیسی

To a Green Painter

Majid Naficy

        To Nooshin

At the Pacific shore
I am wavering
Between Ferdowsi’s couplet
And your installation art
Which you made yesterday
In the salt deserts of Jarquyeh*
With cardamom seed pods and red petals
But before anyone passed by
Scattered in the wind.

Is art play for children
Or labor for immortality?
In the span of two tides
I write this couplet on the sand
With my walking stick:
I built a high castle in verse
Which the wind and rain will not harm.”*

    November 17, 2013

*- A rural district in the province of Isfahan, Iran.
*- From The Shahnameh, the Iranian national epic composed by Ferdowsi (935-1020).