Chapter II — Dawns Horizons
The Chest and Trunk
Poet: Alireza Bemanian
|December 27, 2025
© www.bemanian.com
سرمهِ چشمِ سیاهش کوکبِ سِحرِ افق یکتا سپهرِ نقشِ چشم
— Chapter II epigraph © Dr. Alireza Bemanian, www.bemanian.com
The chest and trunk,
doomed and destined, fated and designed,
not to be tackled, challenged or defied.
The coffin’s contents, virtuous, righteous,
pious and sacred, tendered and ventured.
The only posture, bearings and poses,
avowal to sustain, trust to maintain.
bestowed offers, joined and gathered and linked,
scrolls and parchments, curlicues the ringlets,
not to be altered, renewed and mended.
Though, the eyelashes, stared blackeyes,
spellbind and marvel, invoke and ponder,
urging to foster, bestow the wonders.
Secrets, enigmas, riddles thrillers,
flaps and spills, wallows and lurches,
retain and recall, endure and sustain;
Tenacity, the purpose, resolve and firmness,
while, inherently, innately, and solely,
blanket of snow, coziness of fortune,
spread, stretch, and extend.
Kismets, the fate, staring eyelashes,
orchards, copses, and groves,
the mantle of charisma, curtain of alure,
to mangle and crush, to batter and maul.
Mysteries and secrets, enigmas and riddles,
frissons and quakes, shivers, fizzles, and quivers,
the scenes and postures, facades and aspects,
adapt, revise, and alter.
Ripples and waves, flows and wrinkles,
riding the oceans, racing to bear,
endure and stand, wield and exert,
to shape, whittle and mold, patterns and motions.
Oceans to consent, ripples to gesture,
storms to ponder, mountains to surmise,
changes to pertain, the fates to infer.
The birds, fowls, sparrows and dunnocks,
murmur, mumble, and babble,
sky shy to humble, to beat the tumble.
Alireza Bemanian • December 2025
© www.bemanian.com
Themes & Interpretations
The Chest as Coffin
The poem’s most transformative revelation: the cherished, worshipped chest of the previous poem is here named a coffin. Its sealed condition is not morbid but sacral — the reliquary logic by which the most sacred things are preserved in death’s stillness, fixed against the erosion of time.
“Kismets, the Fate”
The most compressed philosophical statement in Chapter II: kismet (from Arabic/Persian qismat, one’s appointed portion) is placed in direct apposition with fate and with the staring eyelashes. The chapter epigraph’s identification of the kohl-dark eyelash with the horizon’s star is enacted here as fatalism: to be gazed upon is to receive one’s appointed portion.
Blanket of Snow
“Blanket of snow, coziness of fortune” — tenacity figured not as effortful persistence but as a natural covering that falls without trying, equalizes the terrain, and produces warmth. The sealed, entombed chest is simultaneously the source of spreading fortune’s coziness, standing in counterpoint to the coffin of stanza 2.
Mantle of Charisma / Curtain of Allure
The double covering of stanza 7: charisma as a mantle of authority and allure as a partial-revealing curtain. Together they form an attractive-destructive double — “to mangle and crush, to batter and maul.” The gravitational force that draws is the same force that compresses and destroys what it draws in.
The Natural World Deliberates
“Oceans to consent, ripples to gesture, / storms to ponder, mountains to surmise” — the natural world is a thoughtful participant in the inference of fate. This is neither pathetic fallacy nor animism but a philosophical claim: nature makes considered responses, consents, gestures, ponders, surmises alongside the chest’s sealed destiny.
The Dunnocks
The poem closes with the most particular and humble of presences: the dunnock (Prunella modularis), the small hedgerow bird of the British countryside. After fate, charisma’s mantle, consenting oceans, and surmising mountains, what remains is the bird’s quiet murmur. To beat the tumble is not to be grander — it is to be irreducibly ordinary.