Chapter II — Dawns Horizons
Shades on the Plateaus
Poet: Alireza Bemanian
|December 25, 2025
© www.bemanian.com
سرمهِ چشمِ سیاهش کوکبِ سِحرِ افق یکتا سپهرِ نقشِ چشم
— Chapter II epigraph © Dr. Alireza Bemanian, www.bemanian.com
shades on the plateaus,
scattered tall trees on the mesas,
the rainbows,
so mystically, marvelously, and miraculously,
resound, resonate, and invoke,
the echoes, reverberate and beseech.
The eyelashes of her blackeyes,
reflection of the passing rays, harbingers of shift and flow,
Intuitions and hunches, perceptions and insights,
and the sphere and orbit, the dome and arena to glow.
Appeals, draws, and the charms,
the pleads, intreats, the urge and demand,
hiccups, setbacks, and ruptures and breaches,
the splits and rifts, the passing rays and dreams.
Courses and conduits, the means and merits,
depicted zeal, ardent instincts,
predispositions, inclinations, and tendencies,
the harmony to stir, fold, and whip.
Unpaved, bumpy and coarse,
the soles fervent to persist,
the terrains, grounds, and compasses,
souls to emanate and stem,
gushing, rolling, serenity and seal.
while, defying the tumultuous surges to persist;
It is the vibrant ecstasy,
the stupor and elation of the foregone desires and dreams,
huddled, the nested clustered, abandoned virtuous feats,
ardent and fervent to reach,
although trapped within the castle of forgotten scenes.
Huddled and nested,
While, chorales and choruses’ unseen,
the shrine, framed, cathedral, mosque, and temple within,
intone, croon, carol and warble to,
demand the call, crave and claim, and enquire and dare.
The eyelashes of her black eye,
the shadows and traces, shades and the spirits,
the sleuths and trackers———
mesmerize, rivet, and nail.
Behold the glare, gaze the beliefs,
passages, the soaring moments,
the surges of the pulse, rushing of inhaling gulp,
the voyage scrawls, the scroll rolls,
and the destiny and fortune, reveals and goes on.
Redness of roses, the stand of the thorns,
the birds in the sky, the harbingers and messages,
prevailing descant of the pouring quills and feathers,
surmise and bear, survive and endure, the rays of joy.
Alireza Bemanian
December 25, 2025
© www.bemanian.com
Themes & Interpretations
Shades and the Plateau
Landscape as Chapter-Register
Chapter II opens by exchanging the vessel of Chapter I for the terrain. Plateaus, mesas, scattered tall trees, rainbows, shades — these are not containers but vistas. The inquiry shifts from what a vessel holds to what the landscape reveals and what the horizon promises. The plateau is itself philosophically resonant: elevated, self-bounded, open to the sky — a liminal space between the ordinary and the transcendent, and a vessel at landscape scale.
The Eyelash Refrain
The Eye as Cosmic Instrument
The chapter’s epigraph — drawn from Dr. Bemanian’s own copyrighted classical Persian poetry — identifies the kohl of the black eye (سرمهِ چشمِ سیاهش) with the star of the horizon’s enchantment (کوکبِ سِحرِ افق). The poem enacts this identification across nine stanzas: in stanza 2, the eyelashes open onto sphere, orbit, and dome; in stanza 7, they cast shadows and mesmerize with irresistible force. The eyelash is the threshold between the intimate and the astronomical — the fringe at the edge of the eye that is also the kohl-dark line on the horizon.
The Castle of Forgotten Scenes
Memory, Aspiration, and the Difficult Terrain
Stanza 5’s most extraordinary image: memory as a castle, the forgotten scenes as its walls, the abandoned virtuous feats as its inhabitants. The castle is simultaneously a prison (trapping the consciousness in accumulated past) and a preservation (holding what would otherwise be lost). The terrain that leads to the horizon is unpaved, bumpy, and coarse — and the vibrant ecstasy and stupor and elation of stanza 5 are produced by the difficulty, not despite it. Difficulty is the structural condition of reaching the dawn.
Sacred Architectures Within
The Universal Temple
“The shrine, framed, cathedral, mosque, and temple within” — four sacred traditions present simultaneously in the single interior space. None is privileged; the unseen chorales arise from all simultaneously. The poem advances a comprehensive ecumenical claim: all sacred architectures, when traced to their origin, converge within the self. The spiritual summons — to demand the call, crave and claim, enquire and dare — arises from within and belongs to all traditions at once.
The Voyage Scrawls
Journey as Self-Inscription
“The voyage scrawls, the scroll rolls” — the journey does not merely travel but inscribes itself in real time. To scrawl is to write urgently, without retrospective revision: the journey writes its own record as it moves. The scroll unfolds in the act of being traversed. Destiny does not exist and then become known; it reveals itself in the act of journeying — “reveals and goes on” — never arriving at a final disclosure but always in the process of revealing.
Soles and Souls
The Homophonic Pair
“The soles fervent to persist” / “souls to emanate and stem” — placed on consecutive lines, this homophonic pairing collapses the physical and spiritual journeys into a single word-sound. The soles that persist on the unpaved terrain and the souls that emanate from within are one motion seen from two angles: material and spiritual, corporeal and transcendent. This is the poem’s most compressed philosophical innovation — the mind-body problem resolved not through argument but through the coincidence of two sounds.