Chapter II — Dawns Horizons
The Horizons, Distances, and Vistas
Poet: Alireza Bemanian
|December 26, 2025
© www.bemanian.com
سرمهِ چشمِ سیاهش کوکبِ سِحرِ افق یکتا سپهرِ نقشِ چشم
— Chapter II epigraph © Dr. Alireza Bemanian, www.bemanian.com
The horizons, distances, and vistas,
prospects, spheres, and scopes,
the harmonies, comparations, congruences and resemblances,
mingled and merged with,
the arduous, onerous, and grueling ballets of thoughts.
Sneaking and passing by,
the flying temptations and lures,
the inward murmurs, the mutters and mumbles,
the mixed perceptions, turbulent views;
ensued and countered, though forming flashes to drip and ooze.
The timid lines, slants, and styles, reticent starts, passages, and stops,
and, the contrasts, distinctions, and disparities,
tentative deliberations, ponderings, and reflections,
the silents and cagy coagulations, abandoned rays and fallouts,
coalesce and congeal, commemorate and conceal,
tantrums, frenzies, and rages, recap, demand, and repeat.
furies, wraths, and tempers, mingle, merge and bundle,
conflate, coalesce, and not to plunder,
the chest, trunk, and coffer, bolted, barred, and sealed,
said, not to be shaken or wobbled.
Tendencies, propensities, and proclivities,
are not presumed or adopted to barter,
while, reduced or deducted, and dithered and faltered.
Though, the chest and trunk, are awarded and cherished,
and esteemed and worshipped,
extolled and exalted, glorified and adored,
still, it takes and craves to be meandered and rambled,
the husk and the hulk, and the surprise to be haunted.
The spirit and core, the hub and the heart,
consent and approve, endorse and bolster,
to distance and detach, avoid and evade,
the hindered decrees, diktats, and declares,
banned and barred contents, the bares and blanks,
succumb hurdles and snags,
rejoice and cheer to rub and to chafe,
the gist and the nubs, tarnish the snaps.
Denotations, suggestions, the overtones
blunders, bloopers, gaffes and awes,
not to surmount, nor to transcend,
not to summon, nor to spellbind,
render the motions, to judge, to surpass.
Offers, submissions, to nurture and raise,
the pillars of content, props of substance,
the masts, symbols, and cyphers of virtues and merits,
soar and rise, climb and circle, and glide and fly.
Merely to conform, concur, and concede,
the sojourns and stops, implosions and wreckages,
though, destinies coincide, and the souls befit convinced,
the routes and pursuits, are spread and paved, pure and certain.
Twitch and commence, and join the moments,
the jolts and shudders, the thoughts and notions,
the dawn of acclaim, the itinerary of depth, are set to conquer
Alireza Bemanian
December 26, 2025
© www.bemanian.com
Themes & Interpretations
The Ballet of Thoughts
Grace and Gruel as One
“The arduous, onerous, and grueling ballets of thoughts” — the poem’s central paradox. Ballet achieves the maximum of apparent effortlessness through the maximum of actual effort. To name profound thought a “grueling ballet” refuses both the romanticism that makes thinking look easy and the utilitarian view that strips it of grace. The beauty and the labor are inseparable: the grace of the mind that spans horizons is produced by the gruel, not despite it.
The Armored Chest
The Vessel Returns in Guarded Form
“The chest, trunk, and coffer, bolted, barred, and sealed” — Chapter I’s philosophical vessels return in their most defended form. Three container-synonyms locked by three closure-synonyms. But stanza 6 reveals the paradox: the worshipped sealed chest “craves to be meandered and rambled.” The vessel that Chapter I explored as a category of consciousness reappears in Chapter II as the defended self: sealed against the furies it holds, and craving the freedom it seals itself against.
“Not to Plunder”
Creative Containment of Intensity
“Furies, wraths, and tempers, mingle, merge and bundle, / conflate, coalesce, and not to plunder” — the poem’s most important moral pivot. The fierce emotions are gathered and sealed without destroying. Contained intensity, rather than expressed intensity, becomes the ground of the self’s structural strength. The chest that holds the furies “not to plunder” is the same chest that is extolled and adored: the self’s most cherished possession is the one that holds its most dangerous contents with integrity.
Cagy Coagulations
The Phenomenology of Withheld Thought
“The silents and cagy coagulations” — one of the poem’s most original compounds. Withheld thought does not remain in its original liquid state (the “flashes to drip and ooze” of stanza 2) but thickens slowly in silence into semi-solid, concealed masses that “commemorate and conceal” simultaneously. This is a precise phenomenology of the interior: the cognitive flash that is not expressed coagulates into something that preserves its form while hiding its content.
The Itinerary of Depth
The True Horizon Is Vertical
“The itinerary of depth, are set to conquer” — the poem’s most original spatial innovation, placed in the final unpunctuated line. The poem opens with horizontal spatial metaphors — horizons, distances, vistas, prospects — and ends by reorienting the journey from horizontal to vertical. The true horizon is not at the far edge of the visible plain but at the bottom of the self’s interior depth. The dawn of acclaim rises not on the far horizon but at the culmination of the downward itinerary.
Destinies Coincide
Convergence on the Certain Path
“Destinies coincide, and the souls befit convinced, / the routes and pursuits, are spread and paved, pure and certain” — the poem’s most reassuring declaration, arrived at after traversing the full interior reckoning. Destinies do not merely converge (as if accidentally) but coincide — they occupy the same space. The routes are spread and paved: the path has been prepared. The sojourns and stops, implosions and wreckages are not derailments but structural features that make the arrival possible.