Yade Aan Sarwe Rawan

Yade Aan Sarwe Rawan — The Memory of That Walking Cypress — is a poem organized around the reviving power of memory rather than the pain of absence. The 'walking cypress' (sarw-e rawan) is the classical Persian figure for the beloved's graceful gait — the cypress being the tall, slender, swaying tree used to describe idealized feminine beauty and movement. The memory of this image, rather than producing grief, produces the sensation of life returning: 'Into my body life comes again.'

The second stanza introduces the threshold: 'Not one step will I lift from your threshold / Even if the sky comes down to the ground.' The threshold (astana) in classical Persian poetry is the dwelling-place of the devoted lover who cannot enter but will not leave. To refuse to move even if the sky collapses onto the ground is a hyperbolic commitment to remaining — not awaiting admission, but simply refusing to depart. The beloved's threshold is more important than the continued existence of the celestial order.

'Since I have seen your eyebrow's bow / An arrow keeps coming into my eyes' — the eyebrow-as-bow (abru chun kaman) and the arrow-into-eyes image is among the oldest and most used in Persian love poetry. What is distinctive in Zahir's version is the 'keeps coming' (meayad, continuous present): it is not a one-time wounding but an ongoing process. Every time the memory of the eyebrow returns, the arrow arrives again. The memory that begins the poem by returning life also continues to return the wound — the two effects of remembering the beloved are inseparable.