Narrow Passages

Narrow Passages © – Interactive Analysis

Narrow Passages

A Prose Poem on Constriction, Darkness, and the Sinless Architecture of Seeking

Poet: Dr. Alireza Bemanian

February 13, 2026

© www.bemanian.com

Narrow passages through the orchards, copses, and coppices; thinness, feebleness and tightness, the curvatures, warps and twists, penetrate and pierce. Silence, reticence, reserve and restraint; pacify and soothe, the absence, dearth and lack; and the short-sightedness, the sneaky dark spots, sneer and snarl, smirk and grin; the stare and leer, the thunder and roar to traumatize, lacerate, to splinter and rupture, to foment and foster, the leading escorting and steering phantoms, phantasms, and spies and infiltrators, the pillagers and plunderers.

The silence, reserve, and reticence, render and bestow, depict and provide, the bequeathed, conferred moments, the jiffy and flash, or the spark and spike twinkle, mesmerizations, captivations, and enthralls defy, not all to rebuff, or strike—

Inner beguilements or fascinations, engrossments and enchantments, encapsulations and abridgements, brilliances and dazzles, gleams and shimmers, and frown and stare, instances, pleas and urges, the wonders linger and surge.

The gaze and glare, the stroll and ramble, follow and shadow the sailing and gliding breeze on the face. While, the narrow passages, the paths and orbits snake and bend, the breath, the junctures, connections and joints, to inhale, exhale, convene and convoke, the conferred, deliberated, and conversed bonds and conventions, hesitate to be unheeded, or snubbed and flouted, the essence, kernel and core, twist and turn, rove and meander.

Whereas, promptings and evocations, intimations and insinuations, allusions and indications tweak and warp, curl and kink, and curve and contort—
Choices and picks, limits and scales, and sets and spans, creation of mindsets, formation of beliefs and convictions, the manifestations, advents, and pretenses spread and expand, jabbing and jutting.

Commemoratives, tributes, and esteems, cultivate, flourish, and mature,
to barely and merely appropriate, assign, and distribute—

The arrows and cursors, darts and projectiles, commensurate to the agility of allocated rapt resolutions and remedies.

Astoundingly and amazingly, vivaciousness, animations, the exuberance and liveliness, only to thrive, while the continuum and range, the scope and breath intactly, collectively, and sinlessly aim and level, and seek and request.

Alireza Bemanian

February 13, 2026

© www.bemanian.com

Section Analysis

Comprehensive Analysis & Commentary

Themes & Interpretations

Constriction as Epistemology

Understanding arrives through narrowness, not breadth. The narrow passage forces proximity to what might otherwise be avoided—darkness, discomfort, the sneering faces of the dark spots. This enforced intimacy produces knowledge that expansiveness cannot. Wisdom comes from being pressed between walls.

Personification of Darkness

The “sneaky dark spots” that “sneer and snarl, smirk and grin; the stare and leer” give darkness a specificity that abstract menace lacks. Six expressions of malice transform darkness from passive absence into an entity with facial expressions, emotional states, and hostile intentions.

The Breeze on the Face

“Follow and shadow the sailing and gliding breeze on the face”—the poem’s most sensory moment provides tactile relief amid conceptual density. In a poem of constriction, this moment of felt experience grounds the abstractions in physical reality. The breeze is a gift of the passage.

Sinless Seeking

The word “sinlessly” carries the weight of the entire poem. After the sneering dark spots, the phantoms, the warping of perception—after all of this, the ultimate seeking is sinless. The narrow passage has not corrupted its traveler; it has purified them. The constriction was not imprisonment but crucible.

© 2026 Dr. Alireza Bemanian. All Rights Reserved.