Moðan

Mohammad Ali Nahavandi, who uses the pen name "Moðan" was born ill Ärdäbil in 1948.  He has tried his hand at writing poems in various styles and has proved capable in all of them, especially in the qäzäl (sonnet), which epitomizes his poetical achievement.  His best known work is a long poem, "Sultan Savalan" (King Savalan), in which the poet admires the highest mountain in Azerbaijan, describing its natural wonders and beauties.  All the poems in this volume express Moðan's enchantment with Savalan, whose celebrity is as high as the mountain itself.

Nature's beauty!
You the core of many a beauty!
The song of sweet season you are
The airs of lovely looks.
Paradise incarnated, I wonder, you are!
The spring "Kovsär" originated in the lake in your pinnacle,
Flower-carpeted your mountain sides.
With unlidded eyes, I kiss rosy cheeks!
Xýzýr – prophet - like, I seek the life spring In your pinnacle,
To feed on honey-dew oozing from your lips.
In my supplication for the reverence from that holy temple,
Never will I retreat,
Nor will I forsake
The warmth of your arms.

Moðan, like Barez and many his predecessors, is highly conscious of the notion of time and its "shaping up." Such an impression is reflected in two of his short poems below:

Through you swifts away existence In a wink of eye.
Many an event being churned inside you;
History being created layer by layer
In the cradle of your arms,
Growing higher, later falls asleep.
Even if your name be a curl in the hair of time,
Your vastness exceeds the long hair of time.
So, at one end, one gets fed up with life,
At the other end one becomes famished.
Thousands being born in one comer, thousands get old.
One in one breast
Manages to suck life in his endeavor
While thousands in the other
Freeze to death in their winter.
 

The mother of beauty
Rocks the blue moments
In sunlight's cradle.
And
The infant moments
Playing tricks, lovely games
Gaily,
Gradually,
Grow taller.
 

Although much is lost when a poem is translated from one language into another, we venture to give an English version of Moðan's sonnet, "Peyda-Penhan" (Visible-Invisible), because it best represents the importance of "sensitizing concepts" in terms of form and content.

Full of the waves I am, a bubble if be
A drop, though 1, will challenge the sea
Having love license, under my shade I am fully crept,
With the very life, 1, slimy particle, strong ties have kept.
Never suppose me absent, in the whirlwinds strong any will,
I'm like the yesterdays connected to today, tomorrow still.
I'm that visible in the invisible tarried
I'm that invisible to the visible married.
Unified with life are all particles of my sod,
Knitted are my warp and woof completely with God.
Better than a mirror the figures in my design revealing
Truly my disposition is a treasure of meaning.
I am the "Kovsar," the head, the crown, Caesar the brave,
I'm the same "GOD" conjuncted with the "No" and the "SAVE.""
Inherent in me are the river of struggle, departure and joining busts
Stored pearl though I am, for me the motionless call disgusts.
Forsook the self and soul whoever himself did renounce
Who knew himself, Mt.  Sinai he did denounce.
Moðan!  Explain not more, let unveiled be song,
A hint of the truth more fitting, otherwise may be wrong."

In one of his most recent poems, "Täbiätä Hörmät Göstär" (Respect Nature), Moðan supports the ideals of environmentalists and speaks of cosmopolitan trends among peoples of the world:

On the wind-courser feet of my eyes
I stride in the field of the world's beauties.
Prowling about the solitude of the forest,
I perch on its boughs.
Do not disturb their tranquility,
Beware not to tread on the new grown plants.

I explore the limpidity of the drops
Oozing from the silken moss
Only with a gaze.
Astonished by the glories of the trees,
And turning over the pages of their honor,

I nominate them
To the marriage for the impending posterity.
As the spirit of my eyes
Mirror the green verdure of the grass,
Suddenly my gaze dissolves me fully
In the beautiful images of them!

Climbing to the height of the mountains,
I gaze at beauties
And in union with beauty I feed myself.

Beauty everywhere
Beauty overwhelms far and near.

Oceans of happiness flood over my soul.
Floating upon the waves of the beauty,
I suck murmuring happiness from the beauties.
And while,
Adoring nature
I achieve the remedy for which I craved,
From its sacred hand.
 

Ana Sayfaya Dön


savalan@europe.com