Sassan Tabatabai
Reading Hieroglyphics

You came up behind me
and covered my eyes,
open but unseeing
in the empty cavity
of your cupped hands.

My pupils grew
to the faint glow
of the outside world
that displaced the darkness.

The light of the room pushed
against the backs of your hands.

It seeped through the crease
between your fingers
and lit up like ribs of lightning
across the night sky of my vision.

In time
it illuminated the network
of tangled webs on your palms.

They glowed with the authority
of some ancient script

and sure in symbol strange

laid out for me
the undecipherable
hieroglyphics
of your destiny.

_ _

Sassan Tabatabai is a scholar of medieval Persian poetry and epic literature, as well as a poet and translator. He teaches Persian and humanities at colleges in the Boston area, and is also a boxing instructor, coach and referee.

>> Back to Issue 20, 2017