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114 A Homily on Leaving Nader Naderpour Look how these thugs have drained God’s dazzling divine word from the spirit of love. From here on everything you see is the abandoned molts of the cicada of words that hang from the tree branches of speech. Prophets of words! You pen-wielding idols. If your message was the Truth, why did it crash like waves at the shores of degradation? Progeny of the shepherds who witnessed the miraculous lightening of Moses through the eyes of the Samaritans, do you now take the rise of the golden calf as a symbol of auspiciousness? Perform your morning ablutions with new milk. Pray for freedom. And if your hopes, people, are set upon the swallows’ return, turn away your gaze from the windows. A new spring is not coming. My longing was always this: to be severed from this land. I abandoned “I” so that I may merge my words with God’s. 115 Punish me, people, if I be of the same stock as you. If you are all curses, it behooves me to be a prayer. The Beloved’s message will not come from a foul mouth. Blessed is the land of the conscious ones, whose name I will not reveal; blessed is the peal of melodies in its twilight-hued sky. I will go towards its spring where roofs sprout green. The scent of spring, friend, cannot come from a swamp. Translated by Sholeh Wolpé and Sahba Shayani ...

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