“The Corner of Solitary Imagination” (گوشه ی تنهایی خیال )

Even if you belonged
only to a memory’s fading breath,
you would still be beautiful,
my beloved—
in that moment
when I saw you sitting
in the quiet corner of the garden,
beneath the rain
of an autumn-born rainbow,
falling now and then
across your shoulders,
as if to let the amber grief of a leaf
settle softly,
and the cold terror of its fall
onto the frozen earth
slip into forgetfulness.

A shelter—
made for a presence without fear,
or for something akin
to a whisper of life’s clear essence,
circling through the veins of the earth,
rising from the pale body of the root,
flowing upward
through the hidden vessels of the stem,
until, as bud and blossom,
it opens its eyes
to the world.

Even if you lived only
in the fragile realm of imagination,
you remain the master-line
of all my secret tales—
the reason night after night
they speak of rain and sea,
of a fearless bird
ascending in the sky of my dreams,
and of that solemn, weightless longing
that strains against the gravity
of this inevitable earth,
whenever I
fall deeply
into the depths of your eyes.

And even if you have spoken
not a single word,
I stand unwavering
in the imagined hue
of your gaze,
waiting for the locked gate of day
to open at last—
beside the very street
that has been lost
for years.

Arsalan – Wiesbaden
December 6, 2025