Esfahans’ Embrace | Poem

آغوش اصفهان

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✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧ Part I ✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧
Esfahan, with your feyrooz veins
Where the Zayenderood whispers ancient names.
You smiled as I arrived in my Yemeni cloak,
In your Silk Road bazaars, my spirit awoke. 

Esfahan, I escaped to you in search for healing.
I handed over my old patchwork in pieces,
as I surrendered my feelings. 
The gauze . . .
the tourniquet . . .
Pulled apart in your embrace,
As I bled out silently
all over your intricate white lace.

Esfahan,
you shred my certainties thread by thread.
Unravelled and unwoven,
whilst confronting feelings of dread.
In your dusty alleys I stuttered and stumbled.
Without the ability to speak,
I remained mute and so humbled.

𒀭

My mask was worn,
To protect myself from your piercing gaze.
But with your two hands, my shield was torn,
You only looked through me, your vision warped with the haze. 

You were blocked from looking within,
And to my convictions, you did not listen.
So with that, my fingers froze in midair; 
Pulsating cadences that had been escaping my harp,
Abruptly screech to a halt . . .

𒀭

But then, among your ruins, 
and with myself in ruins,
I found my two feet.
My voice! It finally returned,
it’s rhythm so sweet. 

Yet, I still never serenaded you poetry in your native tongue.
I have forgotten you not, Esfahan,
and I will not leave you unsung . . .

𒀭

So abrasive, like your harsh sands.
You crushed me over and over with your bare hands.
Shape–shifter, you are . . . You cradled me in your arms,
And continued to entice me, with all your charms. 

Esfahan, you and your ancient scrolls, with writings so profound,
You could not read me, and like all the others, I was left to drown.

✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧ Part II ✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧

You took me in,
a Saracen stranger from the occident. 
In the orient . . .
I found a home in you, and it was no accident,
That with rise and fall of your breathing river streams, 
Reality set in;
the yearning for another home was no longer just in my dreams. 
I felt it in every passing moment . . .
the new stories woven into my seams. 

Esfahan,
you filled in the crevices of my soul and entire being.
You left permanent embroideries within me;
it’s neither shallow nor fleeting.
You wove your web around me,
and left me entangled.
But once I re-emerged, I glanced back once more,
To bear witness to the realm I once longed to explore,
As I mused over my fates, and the trials that I had handled.

𒀭

My tears fell,
After bidding you farewell . . .
The lingering scent of my perfume left behind since yester–day,
is but an ephemeral relic of myself aching to stay,
Until the day my Arabian incense completely fades away.

As I ventured west,
My final vestiges vanished from Esfahan with time,
Leaving no other essence of my being behind.
I am not ready to end this little poem I wrote . . .
Alas, onward my odyssey goes . . . 

𒀭

Esfahan, I may or may not return to you once more.
But we will see . . .
Once the Zayenderood, perennial life–giver, flows.